Lie To Me
by Dana Poole Rules
Summary: It's set after
1. Introduction

Lie To Me Introduction

Xander leaned against the doorframe with his eyes cast down towards his feet. He could feel his insides wrenching as a jagged, searing pain settled at the base of his throat. He concentrated on keeping himself contained, knowing if he didn't, he would completely lose it right now. 

Feeling somewhat settled he glanced up quickly to see if the situation had settled at all. His ears, after years of training when he grew up, had put the scene on mute, much like his television with the click of a button. The two Slayers, well, not the only two anymore, were in the room arguing emotionally about an assignment. 

The Hellmouth had been destroyed but the tension between these two would last forever. The genius plan they had devised to aid them in destroying the First had worked brilliantly, but as with many spontaneous, crazy ideas, there was the mess they were now responsible for cleaning up. There were new Slayer's being called all of the time, and with the Council destroyed, there were a whole bunch of young girls being given powers they didn't know how to control along with terrifying nightmares and intense emotions they didn't understand. 

Understandably, Buffy had wanted a bit of a break after their battle, but the break she was looking for was still a little ways off. The fight between the two Slayers was about Buffy's latest 'assignment' for Faith. The argument started initially when Buffy decided to tell Faith to do something. Anyone with a brain knew, that was never a smart idea. You ask Faith, you don't tell Faith. Xander, along with a couple other people in the room, knew a fight was about to erupt as soon as Buffy began speaking to Faith in her, 'I'm in charge, do what I say' tone. Faith had never been a fan of that tone coming from anybody. 

But the real problem had come with the fact that Buffy had been assigning all of the 'problem' cases to Faith and taken the easy ones for herself. This didn't get by Faith. She had finally questioned Buffy on her 'assignment' choices, and when words started to fly with more than a little emotion thrown into them, Buffy slipped and told Faith she was giving her the problem cases because she was as fucked up as those girls were and would be able to get through to them better. If she had phrased what she said better, or at least checked her tone before she said it, Faith probably would've accepted it. But the bitter, caustic words were more than she could swallow, so the younger – but equally stubborn – Slayer yelled right back, and thus the fight ensued. 

Xander hated yelling. He grew up in a house full of it and listening to it literally made him sick. He couldn't deal with it so as a defense mechanism he had developed an internal mute button. As he glanced up at the two Slayers, all he could see was them waving their arms around with vicious expressions. He didn't hear the harsh words being spit back and forth, he just saw their mouths still shaped like they were yelling. 

He looked at Buffy and saw the exhaustion in her face and he felt pity for her. He knew she just wanted a break and that she hadn't gotten a single one. It was like she couldn't say two words without getting the backlash from them. He felt sorry for her, but at the same time he understood why people were reacting to her in such a hostile manner. The problem was that she needed to use more effort in approaching everyone, but she didn't have the energy left to do it, so the cycle of anger and frustration just continued. He could tell that she was screaming as loud as she could, and he could also tell that she just wanted to break down crying. She was screaming because she felt like Faith wasn't even hearing her and she hated not being able to get across to her. 

Xander also looked over at Faith, who, in a weird way that he wasn't at all comfortable acknowledging, seemed comfortable when she was yelling like this. She was yelling angrily, but below the surface he could tell a part of her enjoyed it. She was venting and saying what she wanted to say, and no one could stop her. It was hard for him to think about Faith on too deep of a level though, because then he just got as frustrated as Buffy looked right now. 

Faith knew Buffy was tired, she understood why she was acting the way she was acting, but that didn't mean that she was okay with it. Her theory was that the only way someone had the right to ask someone else to do something for them was if they had a full understanding of everything that person had on their plate. In order for them to impose something on them, they were responsible for knowing absolutely everything that was going on with the other person before they were allowed to add more to it. And in her opinion, Buffy didn't know shit about what was going on in her life, so she had no right to be dumping shit on her, just because she was tired. Fuck her! She was tired too! She was tired and she wasn't dumping her load of work on the other girls because she knew, EVERYBODY was burnt out! 

Faith continued to fight with her knowing how it would end. She didn't like the end but it was the way every single one of their fights had ended recently. And then it happened – Buffy finally screamed her last scream before burning tears finally began to fall from her eyes, that she could barely keep open anymore. Faith yelled a final 'fuck you' as she threw her arms up in frustration as she quickly turned away from Buffy and left the room. Xander had to give Faith props on her acting – the first few times he witnessed it he was almost convinced that Faith was angry, but he knew she always walked out of the room because she hated seeing Buffy cry. 

Xander allowed his hearing to un-mute as he sent Giles a customary nod. He stood up off of the doorframe and headed out to his car, which was headed directly to his small apartment so he could pack for the road trip he knew he would be taking with Faith early the next morning to complete the assignment. 


	2. Chapter I

Lie To Me Chapter I

Xander knocked on the door to Faith's apartment and as he waited, glanced down at his watch. It was quarter to five in the morning and the sun had just barely began to peer above the horizon when he parked his truck in front of her apartment building. Faith finally opened the door and for his usual five am greeting, Xander had a duffle bag thrown roughly into his chest. He had grown accustomed to it so he was prepared and caught the duffle. A small grunt escaped him at the impact, which was a vast improvement from the first time she did it and he went flying onto his ass. She hadn't even enjoyed a laugh that time since she had already gone back into her place to grab some more things.

Xander had been able to find the small patterns in their complicated lives. One pattern was the one that always was followed when Buffy and Faith fought. Another pattern he had learned to love was dealing with Faith the next morning for their road trip. He would always come and pick her up and then drive to the location of her next assignment. They weren't a couple or anything, obviously, but since her first assignment, which Giles told him to drive her to, he had been permanently assumed to be her driver. 

With a sigh, knowing the attitude he was about to have to deal with for more than a few hours, he took the duffle bag down to his truck. He tossed it into the back seat next to his duffle bag. He turned to sit straight but then he turned back to look into the backseat again. Their two bags were different makes but it shocked him how similar they looked. He shook his head, concluding that he definitely needed to get more sleep. 

He finished about half of his coffee before she appeared from the apartment building. The sun was only beginning to shine, but as usual, Faith wore a large pair of sunglasses. She wore a tight, ribbed, white tank top with a black backpack and her leather jacket slung on her arm. She wore a pair of jeans with boots that weren't yet tied and the laces dragged along the ground as she walked towards the truck. Despite how tired he knew she was, for as long as he'd known her, the only thing that remained was that walk of hers. That walk that started in her hips and seemed to confidently reverberate through her arms and her legs. 

Seeing her, Xander started up the truck. She climbed into the passenger seat and tossed her bag and her jacket in between the two of them. Xander lifted a cup of coffee towards her with five pills of Advil resting on the lid. She took it from him lowered her glasses to examine the pills. He wasn't sure what to think about the fact that she still didn't trust him enough to take simple aspirin pills from him without careful inspection. 

"So what's the number today?" Xander asked playfully.

"An eight," she answered with a groan. The common question that Xander always asked was, on a scale of one to ten, how bad is your hangover. After the question had been asked so many times it had been shortened. 

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah, I had some extra beer… I was expecting some company." Xander nodded slightly as he drove down the road. "So why didn't you show?" He shrugged and answered,

"I don't know. You didn't seem… you didn't tell me to come over."

"Whatever," she answered, leaning back into the seat of the truck. She swallowed down the five pills and answered, "Well, it's your fault that I have a hangover then." He glanced over at her skeptically, unable to see how that was his fault. She shrugged and added, "I wasn't about to just leave all of that beer."

"And why not?" he asked.

"'Cause I might die. And then it would be wasted…"

"You're ridiculous."

"It's your fault," she answered, more then a hint of anger in her tone. Xander sighed, frustrated and not afraid to vent it. The only part of Faith that he'd found to be predictable was that she was, without a doubt, confusing. 

They drove in silence for over an hour. Xander watched the road in front of him as the Sun continued to become more of a dominant force in the sky. He stole glances to his passenger who was sitting pensively in the seat next to him. More so than usual, he concluded, seeing her distant gaze that appeared to not be thinking about her usual necessities – slaying, sex, and liquor. 

"This one's kind of close to home, huh?"

"Yeah," she mumbled. 

"It might be cool though… you know, seeing a new Slayer from Boston."

"Yeah," she agreed sardonically, "maybe she'll turn out as good as I did."

Xander had grown accustomed to Faith's indifferent, and often irritable, attitude on the way to a lot of her assignments, but this one seemed to really be getting to her. That wouldn't have been a problem, since he was Mr. Understanding when it came to stuff like this, but she spent more energy trying to act like nothing was wrong then she did trying to deal with it. 

So here's how it went after their fourteen hour drive – which really only felt like an hour or two – to Boston. 

Xander parked the truck in the parking lot of a decent looking motel and when he went to get two rooms for three nights, Faith unloaded their bags from the vehicle. Xander returned with the keys and gave Faith hers, and the two agreed to meet back at the truck in an hour so they could go get some dinner. They both met back at the truck at the same time, went and got some delicious food from a local diner, went on a productive patrol, and then returned to their separate rooms ready to recuperate and start the next day.

Okay, so that's definitely not how it went… First of all, the drive felt like it took a year and a half with the number of arguments they managed to have. Second was that, while Xander was parking the truck in the lot, he hit the fence, making a nice dent in the fender. After he was able to park the overly large vehicle, which he cursed for ten minutes straight and Faith commented on the fact that, even if you have the size it doesn't mean you know how to handle it, he went into the office and returned with a key to a single room. Faith reamed him for assuming he was getting some and sent him straight back to the office to get another, separate room. 

Xander did go back and got another room, cursing her under his breath for being such a pain in the ass. In an hour, Xander was back out at his truck waiting to get dinner, but it was another forty-five minutes before Faith showed up. They went to a diner and were served this greasy stuff that they assumed was supposed to be their food. Faith left Xander with the bill – as usual – and they walked around trying to find something for Faith to kill, preferably an undead something, but at this point, with the attitude she was coping, Xander was about ready to let her torture anything, as long as it would improve her mood. 

They found nothing for Faith to take her energy out on so when they got back to the motel, Xander had originally been correct, there was no need for a second room. 

Faith led the way into her room and switched the light on as Xander closed the door behind him. Before he even turned around, Faith was pulling at his jacket. He quickly discarded his jacket and shirt before grabbing her thighs in his hands and picking her off of the ground and pushing her against the wall. He kissed her as fiercely as she kissed him, trying to deny to himself that Faith might've been able to convince him to think that none of this meant anything. 

It certainly wasn't the first time this had happened. It actually had become something of a pattern… Faith claimed it as a bad habit, while Xander tried to defend that she felt something for him. She assured him that it was because she was getting too lazy to go out and find someone new every time, so she would just go back to him because it was easy. Both of them were fairly certain that her claim held no validity, but there was always that shred of doubt that liked to slice its home in Xander's mind.

The pattern had begun on a night that Xander ran into Faith in a bar after a long day. They went back to her place and Xander was reminded why Faith still was the host of absolutely all of his fantasies. Xander was convinced that it would be another couple of years before she'd even think about sleeping with him again, but to his surprise and delight, she was back later that same week with her convincing argument about her laziness. 

They weren't in a relationship of any sort, at least not one lacking extreme dysfunction, but they hadn't gone more than two weeks without spending a night together. No one had a clue about them… it wasn't that either of them consciously thought of hiding it, but they were so busy denying it to themselves that it carried on to everyone else. 

Faith laid in bed trying to deny the fact that his heavy, warm body leaning on her was the best feeling in the world to her. She glanced down – okay, more like a steady stare – at him, sleeping with his head resting on her chest and his arm slung around her waist. She had only been able to sleep for about fifteen minutes. This was usually when she woke him up and told him to leave. Depending on his mood, he decided to listen or not. 

She zoned out as she stared at him and her mind fell into a daydream, strangely enough about her last boyfriend she had when she was still living in Boston. 

She sat up on a dresser against the wall in his room. She finished off a beer that they'd stolen from a gas station earlier that night just for kicks. They were both bored… She was drinking her beer and trying on all of his various hats that were resting on top of the dresser with her. She would turn to the mirror on the wall behind her to see how they looked, exchanging sexy looks with goofy grins, and then turning to him for some sort of approval. He was too consumed in a playboy magazine he was flipping through to notice his girl looking at him – and desperately trying to win his attention. 

Faith finally settled on a dark grey cap and slid off of the dresser. He was sitting with his legs hanging off the side of the bed as he read the magazine more intently than he'd ever read anything in his life. Faith crawled onto the bed and kneeled behind his back and started rubbing his shoulders. 

"What'cha reading?" she asked curiously. She glanced over his shoulder to see a two page spread of this hot, skinny, blonde. The girl in the picture was the polar opposite of her. She was the bright and bubbly blonde, whereas Faith was the voluptuous, sultry type. 

"Isn't she hot?" he asked. 

"Yeah," she answered, now officially feeling like shit about herself. She rubbed her boyfriend's shoulders as she kissed his neck and ear but his attention never shifted from the blonde he was now transfixed on. 

"I mean, just look at her…" he said, still amazed at the piece of paper in front of him rather than the gorgeous girl next to him, starving for his attention. "I could fuck her so bad…" His complete obliviousness was partially due to the joint they had smoked less than an hour before, but Faith was clear enough to feel the twisting pain inside of her. 

She finally swung her leg around in front of him and sat on his lap facing him. The only thing between the two of them was the magazine he was still staring at. She ground her hips down into him and kissed his forehead. He moaned encouragingly, and she almost accepted it until he added,

"Oh my God, this is so hot. Oh, I never thought I could get some and stare at something like this… this is wicked! Faith, keep going, okay?"

Faith shook her head, forcing her focus back onto the room she was really in, rather than her old boyfriend's bedroom. She didn't realize it, but she had inhaled a breath of air sharply as she shook her head, and Xander was immediately awake. He saw the look in her eyes and sat up quickly to be at her level. As he sat up, so did she; stiffening herself away from him and pulling the sheet up around her. He didn't understand what was wrong with her but he clearly saw insecurity dripping off of her. 

"What's wrong?"

"Why did I keep going?" she asked in a mumble. "Why did I do it?" she asked again, this time searching Xander's face for the answer she needed. 

"Baby, what are you talking about?" he asked, with more concern than anyone had ever heard in his voice. And it was because he literally had never felt so scared in his entire life. Seeing someone who hadn't just never allowed an insecure note to leave her mouth in his company, but in anyone's company, sound the way she sounded, and look the way she looked, it terrified him. 

He grabbed her arms in his hands, trying desperately to soothe her. She sat there silently, but clearly troubled. He found himself even shaking her a little because her silence was almost more terrifying.

"Why did I do it?" she asked, more to herself than anyone else.

"Do what, baby?" he asked again. He wasn't sure whether she was talking about her, you know, killing spree lifestyle for a while, or maybe about things he had no idea about. He didn't venture to ever assume anything with her, so he waited for her to fill in the blanks. 

In a snap, she seemed to finally grasp control over herself again, and she shook her head, forcing herself to return back to her indifferent, closed self. 

"I'm not your baby," she corrected sharply as she pushed his hands off of her. 

"Faith…"

"Yo," she answered, "Why don't you go back to sleep… I'll be back later."

"But-" he began, sitting up to stop her. He stopped when she glanced back over at him. There was something about the way her eyes fell on his that cautioned him and kept him from continuing. 


	3. Chapter II

Lie To Me Chapter II

Xander didn't go back to sleep. He listened to her get dressed in the bathroom after showering and he listened to her grab her jacket and he listened to her leave. He hated that sound worse than anything, yet she forced him to hear it so often. He hated having to sit back passively and listen to that faint click of the door closing behind her.

He forced himself to sit in bed for at least another hour and then got dressed himself. He was found himself pacing around her bedroom, and even going through some of her bag, for hours. He wanted to go out and get something to eat but he was worried that she'd get back and he wouldn't be here. He wanted her to come back. That was another thing that he hated, yet she forced him to deal with it so often. She always held that idea over his head – the idea that he never could be completely sure that she would be coming back. For so long she had been forced to feel that doubt, and now she had an undying urge to inflict it on others.

Xander laughed to himself as he remembered when Faith and him were joking and she said her next tattoo was going to be 'Warning: If you're male, I have an undying urge to be mean to you' right across her forehead.

"So you do crack yourself up, huh?" Faith asked nonchalantly as she walked back into the room. He looked up, and like every other time that she came back, he couldn't help but take a little relief in it. But once that small fragment of a moment passed, he couldn't help but notice the constant questioning that ran through her eyes. She didn't trust him… but could he blame her? He didn't trust her, did he? He looked over at her – she stood there, looking as strong as ever, and he couldn't tell whether he trusted her or if he had just figured her out a little bit better. 

She walked towards him and he sat down on the edge of the bed. Being more forward than usual, she sat on his lap facing him and began kissing him as she ground her hips into him. 

"I don't know why you bothered putting all those clothes back on," she added as she began pulling his shirt out from the waist of his jeans. She pulled it over his head, her hips still rhythmically pulsing against him. As soon as his shirt was over his head her lips were right back against his. He grabbed her waist and ran his hands up and down her sides. He'd touched her a lot, but it shocked him when he heard the whimpers and moans so easily escape her lips. He pulled away from her lips but she instantly attached them to his neck. 

"Faith," he said, gripping her waist and pulling her back. 

"What?" she asked with a fake smile. 

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she answered, unbuttoning his jeans. "Now fuck me."

"Faith, I-" She ran her tongue from his jaw up the side of his face to his forehead. She grabbed his hands and brought them to her ass just before she pushed him forcefully backwards, so he was now lying down on the bed rather than sitting. 

Xander understood that sex with Faith could leave bruises… he understood that that happened sometimes. She tended to get very into it all, and occasionally that led to bruises, which he was fine with. There was nothing better than sex with Faith when she was that into it. He loved when she got that into it – it was amazing, but he had a line. He was allowed to have a line – Faith had almost killed him in contexts way too similar to that of 'just some rough sex'. He was okay with her getting into it and maybe getting a little out of hand, but he wasn't alright with her starting out that way. 

"Hey," he said pushing her stomach. The only reason he had been alright with their 'pattern' was because she was commendably responsive to him not being alright with something. Usually a little nudge, or even him taking a short, uncomfortable breath, she was getting up off of him and willing to apologize… okay, realistically, she'd just walk into the other room pretending to be pissed off, but she was apologetic because otherwise she wouldn't have stopped. 

But this time it was different. He had given a nudge and said something, and she just shook her head and continued kissing him and trying to find his arms to hold. He turned his face to the side and pushed his arm in between his stomach and hers that was pressed against him. 

"Fuck you," he finally sputtered as he was able to push her off of him. He rolled her onto her back and grabbed her wrists and slammed them down onto the bed above her head. He held them down as he hovered over her angrily. She looked into his face smiling devilishly and answered,

"Yes please." He gripped her wrists in his hands and for a moment he wasn't sure what he wanted to do more – literally fuck her all day and all night or… yeah, he was stupid enough to go for his other idea.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he looked down into her eyes. 

"What's the matter is that that dick you have isn't being used to its full potential," she answered smugly. She arched her back and brought her lips up towards his but he held her wrists tightly so she fell short by several inches. "Oh, come on…" she whined. He let go of her wrists and got off of the bed. "Xander, come on," she whined again, but she stayed lying on the bed. 

"You need to fucking chill out," he warned angrily. 

"Fine," she answered putting her arms out on the bed as she laid there, "I'm chilled out. Can we fuck now?"

"No." He buttoned his jeans again and added, "We have a job to do. Let's go."

"It's done," she answered, now resolved to the fact that she wasn't going to get any right now. She laid on the bed trying to pretend to be alright with that fact. 

"What are you talking about? It's done? What's done? Faith, it's not like we came here to take a Polaroid or to touch a button. We came here to take in a troubled girl who doesn't understand her calling. That's not just a two hour type of deal!"

"It's done," she repeated, only strangely, this time she said it more quietly. 

"What the fuck is going on? Did you find her?"

"Yeah," she answered shortly, turning over onto her side and pulling the pillow under her head. 

"Faith!" he yelled, finally losing his patience. She sat up angrily and threw the pillow down. 

"She's dead. We're done." Her voice was firm and forced to be blank. Xander looked at her quizzically for a moment and then asked with forced levity,

"Did you kill her?"

"No!" she snapped.

"Hey, I didn't think you did," he defended, "you'd be in a better mood." He wiped the smirk from his face seeing her literally laying brick down around her, layer after layer, by the second. "Faith, what do you mean, dead?"

"She hung herself," she answered. She looked over at him for the first time since he was hovering over her and he swore he could see tears pooling in her eyes. "Now will you do me?" Xander walked back over to the bed knowing how upset she was, even if she did display it in a strange way. He sat down next to her and asked,

"Did someone tell you or did you… did you walk in… did you see her?" She didn't answer him, she just leaned forward and kissed him. It shattered his heart to feel her lips trembling against his, despite how hard she was trying to keep them steady. Xander kissed her back, needing to chant in his head that he didn't love her, in some desperate attempt to convince himself. 

Faith relaxed – at least a little – and laid down on her back, bringing him down with her. He kissed her lovingly, moving from her lips to her jaw to her neck until she whimpered,

"Xander, make love to me." She turned her head to catch his lips again. She kissed him and then murmured, "make it all disappear." 


	4. Chapter III

Lie To Me Chapter III

"Hey," she greeted hesitantly as she approached her boyfriend. 

"What's up, babe?"

"Can I talk to you for a second?" she asked with the same hesitancy. He responded with an indifferent shrug and a nod to his buddies before breaking from his group of friends and following her only a few steps away.

"What?"

"Can you walk me home, or something…"

"Why?"

"Just cause…"

"This better be important," he warned. "Hey guys, I'll catch up with you later, alright?" He waved to his boys and finally started walking, except it wasn't in the direction of her house, it was more in the direction of his. She knew he was going to his house instead so she just followed quietly. 

They ended up in his apartment and he pressed insensitively,

"So was this about some chick drama or did you just want to get some?"

"No… I'm pregnant."

"Is it mine?"

"Of course it's yours! You're my boyfriend!"

"That don't mean shit…"

"Yes it does."

"Alright, whatever. Why you bugging me about it? That's girl shit."

"I-" her voice caught in her throat, unable to deal with his complete lack of concern. "I don't know what to do. What do I do?"

"Take care of it," he answered shortly. She tried to decrypt his words and when that failed she attempted his body language, but still came up short. 

"Baby," she said, grabbing his arm, "How?" The confusion and desperation was practically written on her forehead and yet he still didn't seem to care.

"Are you stupid or something?" he asked, his tone getting hostile. "Get rid of it." With that he pulled his arm away from her and walked over to his mirror. He pulled his shirt off and replaced it with a similar one. "Hey, I've got to do some shit. Why don't you go?"

"Yeah," she answered, feeling ashamed that she had bothered him about something so obvious. 

Xander closed the gas cap tightly, listening to the quick clicks, and then closed the small gas door. He walked over to the driver's door and opened it, needing to grab his wallet off of his seat. As the door opened, Faith jumped out of her daze. She'd been intense to be around lately but after finding this newly called girl – one who, on at least some level, was thought to be Faith Junior, since she was from Boston and said to be just as troubled– hanging in her bathroom, she was shifting from one extreme to the other, almost too fast for Xander to keep up. She was doing one-eighties; she'd either be shut down and cold, not wanting to be touched or even talked to, and then she'd all of a sudden jump to being almost needy, wanting to be reassured and held. The problem wasn't the fact that Xander couldn't tell what mood she was currently in, it was the fact that Faith didn't like ever being ignored and she didn't like being comforted. Xander, one of these fucking decades, you have got to find yourself a normal chick to hang out with! 

"You alright?" he asked, even though it was pretty clear that she wasn't. She had to clear her throat before she was even able to lie,

"I'm fine."

They drove for a while until Faith spoke, breaking the record breaking two hours of silence,

"We should stop for a little while." Xander nodded, even though he had just gotten into the driving zone where he was at maximum caffeine level and felt like he could drive forever. The way she said it and the short glance she gave him, he knew why she wanted to pull over. 

They stopped in the back lot of an abandoned looking pizza parlor just off of the highway. Xander switched off the exterior lights to the truck and turned off the engine. He looked over at her as he heard the clicking of his own seatbelt being unfastened. He turned and took her face in his hands as he kissed her, running his lips against hers while somehow keeping up with her. He maneuvered himself around so he was now kneeling on the seat, facing her, where she was still sitting, waiting for him to climb on top of her. 

He was cautious about his approach, aware of the mood she was in – well more like, unsure of it, which in this case, was the problem. She pulled on his hip, so he took the hint and put his hand on her hip to pull her onto the seat sideways. He pushed one of her legs between his as he leaned forward and encouraged her to lie back by putting his hand behind her head to keep her from hitting it on anything. She laid back, but Xander hated how now that he'd been with her so many times, he realized just how un-relaxed she always was. She was comfortable with sex, but at any point where there was even a moment of vulnerability in her mind, there was a huge tension. 

As he kissed her, supporting his upper-body with one arm propped up by his hand near her head on the seat, he unbuckled his jeans with the other. Xander didn't consider himself a sex connoisseur, but car sex with Faith was always a simple, quick release that followed a fairly straightforward pattern. They kissed, she would lay down, he'd get his jeans off, he'd get her jeans off, and they'd get sweaty. Straightforward and uncomplicated, right? This was the one sexual situation with her that involved little or no thinking on his part, and he had to admit, sometimes that was really nice. 

He got his jeans off and then reached down for hers. On a normal, uncomplicated day, she'd either push his hand away and do it herself because he was way too uncoordinated for her, or she'd at least move her hips to help him out. Today though, when he reached for the button, she shifted her hips about half of a centimeter, but in a direction that didn't make it helpful… His brain, which was not exactly located between his ears at a moment like this, tried to register what this meant, if it meant anything at all. His hand lingered at the button as he tried to think. She sped the thought process up for him as she turned her head to the side and stared uncomfortably at the floor of the truck. He pulled his hand away from her jeans as if they'd burned him. Everything about her body language was screaming for him to stop.

"What's the matter?" he asked, her subtly not lost on him, even if it had maybe gone unnoticed by her.

"Nothing… come on," she answered blankly. Her breath was short and jagged and she even rested her hand on her stomach to try and slow it down. Her body was speaking a different language than her voice. Xander decided to go with the signals instead of the words, and he pulled his jeans back up, despite how uncomfortable that was. "What the fuck?" she asked angrily. She looked at him, confused, as he sat up, but as she too sat partially back up, he noticed her confidence return, now that she wasn't being imposed on. 

"You don't seem like you're in the mood," he answered understandingly. 

"Of course I am," she answered, almost offended at the notion that she might for one second not be in the mood. 

"It's fine," his voice soft and reassuring. She stared at him and he could tell that she was trying to calculate if he was sincere or just saying it. "You okay?" he asked, growing very concerned. She looked at him for another long moment, biting her lower lip as she continued to try and test his sincerity, and then reaching a decision (which one, he couldn't be sure) she climbed onto his lap, straddling him, and rubbed his shoulders as she continued to stare into his eyes. 

She lowered her lips down to his and kissed him hungrily, before guiding his lips down to her neck and throat. She breathed heavily into his ear as he kissed her neck and held her breasts firmly in his hands. She lowered her own hands to the button of her jeans and undid it. She did it smoothly like anything else; Xander wouldn't have realized she had even done it except that it was followed by her turning her head rigidly to the side as she had done before. 

He was kissing her neck, and would've continued but the tension she was feeling was radiating off of her. He felt it in her body, pressed up against him; felt it in her arms and hands that she had gripping his thighs right behind her own; felt it in her breasts as she tightened her back. Xander looked up at her and lowered his hands to her waist. 

Faith realized he had stopped and turned her head back to face him, immediately pulling him back into a kiss, and then immediately pushing him back to her neck with encouraging moans. Xander kissed her, wanting to do something that would make her not feel this way… He didn't know what was wrong, but it ate away at his insides to know that she felt something bad inside of her. This was only a cover-up though… and he knew it. 

As he kissed the soft skin on her neck ever so slowly and so hungrily, his mind flew at light's speed. Faith had always told him that what they did together, all of those nights and days and front seats, she always told him that it didn't mean anything. For a while they had kind of agreed to disagree. Xander knew that there was more to it than she would admit – he backed it up by defending sarcastically that, 'it's so unlikely that you'd repress your feelings, Faith'.

A meaningless fling is filled with giggling and flirting, not whimpers and bruises. For a long time, he was unsure. Faith was an intense person to be around, so therefore sex with her should be no different. Faith carried her baggage well hidden – for the most part – but she always carried it, so he figured it was normal for that baggage to be present during sex. But was that just with him? Xander finally found a logically good reason for personal sex tapes! He got excited – he could finally tell Willow since they'd had the ongoing argument for years… but it figured, he couldn't really tell her because it had to do with Faith. He wished he could know if she was the way she was with him, with all the other guys she was with. There wasn't really any way of him knowing…

Allowing himself to linger on the thought for way too long, Xander had to admit he began to feel quite jealous and possessive. He wasn't the jealous-possessive type! But the idea of anyone else touching her really irritated him. 

Focus! He reprimanded himself. 

He could usually tell that Faith was dealing with a lot of shit on those nights when she'd show up, fuck the hell out of him, and then be gone without a word. Those were the nights that really scared him. But she'd never been uncomfortable – un-relaxed, all of the time; the girl's a Slayer! – with sex. This was a whole heap of issues added to the already impressively large heap. 

Xander lowered his hands to the waist of her jeans and saw the immediate negative response jump through her, despite how hard she was trying to mask it. He hated the fact that even though she was obviously uncomfortable, she didn't say a fucking word! That infuriated him. But he wasn't angry at her, he was angry at all the pieces of shit she'd been with. He grabbed both sides of her jeans and pulled them together and re-buttoned them. 

She looked at him quickly, confused, and therefore immediately showing anger and frustration. He felt her begin to lift her leg to get off of him so he grabbed her thigh to hold her in place. 

"I'm not your fucking make-out buddy," she spat caustically. 

"Please," he said, leaning towards her, "I just want to kiss you."

"That's not all you fucking want – don't lie to me."

"Just for a couple of minutes… please," he asked, knowing all she wanted was him only wanting to kiss right now. She obviously didn't want him inside of her right now but inside, she needed him. Xander had found that there was an inverse relationship between the things Faith needed and the things she allowed herself to have.

Xander didn't wait for her to agree, he just waited for her to not protest. Holding her on both sides, his thumbs under her breast with his other four fingers wrapped around her back, he held her supportively as he kissed her. She leaned her back against the dashboard, finally submitting to her real inner urgings, and held his face as he kissed her. 

A couple of minutes turned into about an hour, but even after that they didn't part. Faith, to his surprise, stayed on his lap and rested her head on top of his, gently stroking the side of his head as she teased his hair. He held her around her waist in a steady, strong hold. He knew if he started the gentle strokes she'd kick his ass. He wanted her to talk to him, but him starting the conversation was only a guarantee that he'd also end it with the same word. After another couple of minutes she finally spoke, keeping her tone joking and supposedly without deep meaning.

"You know, I've never kissed someone I didn't sleep with." Xander thought about that for a while and the only response he could muster was to hold her a little bit tighter. She was quiet for a few moments and then added in a more quiet tone, "Sometimes I think… maybe it would've been better if…" Xander wanted to look into her face as she spoke but he stayed quiet staring at her chest. He knew she wouldn't be able to be so honest if she were looking at him – it was easier for her to talk and be able to pretend there was no one else there. Still resting her head on his she continued, "Maybe this girl had the right idea…" 

Xander wasn't sure what she was talking about at first, and then he realized by the lump she had to clear from her throat, that she was talking about the girl who had killed herself. He pulled her back by her arms so he could look at her and he was shocked to see her eyes filled with tears. 

"I hate my life," she admitted. "I hate everything about it… it's all just… dirty. I hate it… it just hurts and…" she stopped as the tears began to run down her cheeks. 

Feeling them running on her skin reminded her that she needed to stop. Feeling Xander touch her cheeks to wipe them away screamed at her that she needed to stop. She shook her head,

"I don't know why I'm saying all this shit to you." She pulled herself back to composure in an amazing second and a half. She wiped the tears away from her face roughly and again motioned to get off of him. He grabbed her thigh again and asked,

"Who else are you going to say it to?" She looked at him angrily and he added, "You know I didn't mean it like that."

"Fuck you."

"You don't talk to anybody else about this kind of stuff, Faith! You act like everything's fine… everything's just one funny story after another!"

"Back off," she warned, getting off of him. 

"You're hurting right now… that's okay. You walked in and saw a young girl who had just killed herself. Faith, I don't care how fucking strong you are, that hurts. Faith, you're strong… I know you are, but if you've thought about doing that kind of a thing, you need to talk to somebody."

"I wouldn't do it," she answered, her voice detached and cold. "Seeing that girl… it's not seeing her that got to me. Seeing her is exactly why I wouldn't do it."

"I don't follow."

"You said I saw a girl that just killed herself." Xander wasn't sure what she was about to say but as her voice raised in volume with each word he saw the emotion creeping up from deep inside of her. "Xander, she'd been there for a fucking week! And no one even fucking cared!" Xander watched her struggle to maintain her composure, her face switching expressions, desperate to find anything that would help her hide what she was feeling. 

She knew exactly who that girl was. She knew exactly how she was feeling and what she was thinking, because it was exactly who she had been. She knew what it felt like to want to take your own life to spite everyone else. But she didn't do it because she knew she wouldn't get that big funeral that was always in her dreams. The funeral where everyone who she'd ever known came and couldn't stop crying. All of them, even the faceless guys she'd been with, in her head during those dreams of her funeral, she remembered each and everyone of their faces. She remembered their voices and their expressions, and she pretended to know what they'd look like when they cried because they were sorry for not loving her and now that she was gone all they wanted was to have her back so they could tell her that. She almost killed herself because she thought she'd somehow get a front row seat and be able to see everyone crying, and that would make the price worth it. All she wanted to hear was someone cry over her, just once. 

But she didn't do it because she knew she wouldn't get that big funeral that was always in her dreams. She knew she would be exactly where she was and she would rot before anyone even noticed she was gone. 

Xander sat there like his lunges had been gouged out with his eye. He couldn't decide whether or not to speak or stay silent. He couldn't decide whether to breathe or allow himself to pass out. He couldn't decide whether to reach out to her or leave her alone. It was moments like this that jokes always worked best, he concluded.

"Buffy said that you kissed Angel. You didn't sleep with him though…"

"Like I said, I've never kissed anyone I didn't sleep with."

"You fucking slept with Angel?" Xander asked, more in shock than in disgust. 

"Why do you got to bring shit like that up?" she asked, her tone just plain pissed off. 

"So where is she?" Kennedy asked excitedly, expecting a new Slayer to be with them. 

"Back so soon?" Giles asked with a smile. "So it went well?" Faith walked past both of them without a word as she stared straight ahead of her as she walked. "Faith…" Giles called again. 

"We need to talk," Xander stated, quieting the now very chatty room. 


	5. Chapter IV

Lie To Me Chapter IV

"Hey," Xander greeted softly as Faith looked out of her apartment at him through an only slightly ajar door. She looked at him for a long moment then turned away from the door, leaving it for him to come in through and close behind him. 

He walked in and closed the door behind him, glancing around almost nervously. Her apartment was much different than her old motel room but he held onto a lot of the same feel. He guessed it must've just been the fact that she lived there. It was a small, railroad car styled apartment with a kitchen at one end of the single, narrow and long room and a bed at the other. The apartment was sectioned into three areas but there were no walls dividing them. In between the eating and sleeping areas was a couch and television. Duffle bags filled with clothes, weapons, and mementos seemed to line the walls rather than furniture. If anyone was ever unsure of the fact that Faith never settled (in any respect of the word) seeing her home proved it. 

"It's been a while," she commented, only half joking, as she picked up her television remote off of the couch and put the TV on mute. He watched her toss it back down on the couch and then slide some stuff - what looked like a box or something - back into a backpack that was also on the couch. 

"Figured I'd give you a little time…"

"Yeah, thanks," she answered.

"Can you add maybe an ounce of sincerity to that?" She looked over at him, trying desperately to ignore the painful twisting of her stomach. He saw that look in her eyes, the only one that was more noticeable to him than her evil one; it was her look of disappointment. It was a look that absolutely broke his heart to see despite how many times he'd messed up and seen it. Suddenly his logic, the logic he had gone over countless times while pacing around his own apartment as to why he shouldn't call her or come see her even though he really wanted to, seemed flawed.

"Listen," he finally spoke again, unable to look at her be so disappointed in him, "I'm sorry… I figured you needed some time to think… you know, some time alone."

"Yeah, that's me," she answered in that same sardonic, feigning a joke, tone. "I really need to bank up on my alone time." She harnessed her arms which had been narrating her feelings with her words and held herself with them. She watched Xander walk over to her fridge and start emptying the grocery bag he had in his hand. He didn't always bring stuff for her but whenever he went shopping for himself he'd pick her up some things. It was an attempt at filling the void inside of him that wanted to be able to take care of her. 

"Look, I just thought…" he began as he put the food in the fridge, "you didn't seem to want to deal with me in the car… so I figured you wanted… some space." He spoke awkwardly and it threw both Faith and him off. Faith finally found the meaning at least she was looking for and answered,

"Oh, so really it's cause I didn't fuck you," she concluded.

"That's not-"

"No, no, no, I dig. I didn't fuck you in the car so you figured what the hell's the point of coming around…"

"You seemed distant so I-"

"Distant AKA didn't fuck you."

"Faith, I thought you wanted me to not be around for a while."

"Yeah, I can totally see where you got that from, with me saying it and all – Xander, I want you to not be around for a while, yeah, I think I recall saying that," she answered sarcastically.

"Yeah, because you come out and say what you're feeling all the time!" he defended.

"I say it when it matters," she answered just as quickly, "like, a little to the left, deeper, oh yeah, baby more," she moaned, mocking him mercilessly. It scared him a little that she was able to turn that moan on and off like she had a fucking switch!

"You know, Faith, I'm trying okay? Saying you're complicated is like the fucking understatement of the century!"

"You're always trying to prove that you're not like all the other guys, but you are! Oh, you're not going to get some so why come, huh?"

"Faith, stop it!"

"You're all the same, I don't care what you fucking say! What, you figured you'd give me a week or so to get all hot for you again? Newsflash, asshole, I was never hot for you, you're just a convenient fuck."

"There's no way I'm going to win this argument," he admitted, accepting his defeat.

"Which, knowing you, means you're not even going to try," she spat viciously. 

He finished putting the last thing into the fridge and balled up the plastic bag trying to let his frustration fade before he proceeded. He looked as though he hadn't just been in an intense argument with an angry Slayer as he put a box of cereal on top of the refrigerator and tossed the balled up bag onto the counter. 

"Are you done?" he asked, his tone calm but the presence of anger and hurt blatantly evident. She stood there, still hugging herself, with tension radiating off of her. "What's wrong?" he asked. Usually after an argument Faith felt better and there was less tension. She shrugged and answered with quiet anger,

"You're just all the same…"

They looked at each other for a long moment until she finally broke their gaze. She turned and walked towards a bag against the wall and pulled a large sweatshirt out of it. She pulled it on over her t-shirt and it fell past her shorts on her legs, which was only a couple inches from her hip. Completely ignoring him, she sat down on the couch, sitting on one foot and pulling her other knee up to her chest. She clicked the sound back on resuming what she was doing before he got there. 

"See," he said, his tone gaining a lot of much needed levity, "I'm not going to fuck this one up again. I'm not going to misinterpret you acting like you want me to leave to mean that I should. No sir, I'm seeing you acting like you want me to go so I'm going to stay." 

She glared at him, not fully appreciating the humor since it was mocking her. He walked towards the couch and sat down, taking care to not sit on the duffle bag. He looked at the stuff that she had attempted to conceal inside of it and said in the same tone,

"Ooo, this looks interesting…"

"It's not," she answered curtly.

"I'm going to interpret that to mean that it is," he mocked. "So what is it?"

"It's nothing," she answered in the same tone.

"I'm going to interpret that to mean that it's a something." She glared at him and he added, "Let's have a look."

"Don't touch my shit."

"I'm going to interpret that to mean that you want me to see it."

"You're so fucking annoying!" she answered, finally losing her patience and really not wanting him to go threw that bag.

"I'm going to interpret that to mean that you think I'm sexy," he answered with a hopeful smile.

"Whatever," she answered, completely frustrated. She stood up off of the couch and walked to the bathroom which was off of the bedroom section. Xander watched her, unsure of whether or not she had gotten even a hint of enjoyment out of his joke. With her it was possible for her to think it was funny and leave so that he wouldn't see her thinking it was funny, or then again, she could just really not think he was funny.

Faith walked out of the bathroom and back towards the couch to see Xander looking at the pictures that had been inside the box in that bag. He looked up at her as she stopped abruptly,

"These are really nice," he said honestly. 

She walked past him and towards the kitchen without a word. He sighed, trying to figure out how many times he could mess up in one day. He picked up a handful of the pictures and followed her into the kitchen. 

"You loved him, didn't you?" he asked, glancing down at the picture on the top of his small handful. It was of Faith and Richard Wilkins sitting on a couch in one of the rooms in the Town Hall. They were both smiling and if Xander didn't know any better, well… he did know better. He tried to not be distracted by the details of the picture; he saw the black leather jacket she wore with glimpses of the intense weaponry just underneath it, he saw the snake-like demon sitting next to her, but most of all, he knew just how much blood was on both of their hands as they sat there together smiling. 

"Why do you gotta always talk about the past?"

"Why do you always avoid talking about it?"

"Because in case it just happened to slip your mind, it wasn't exactly a good couple of decades for me, big guy," she snapped. There was a long silence until Xander added as he continued to look at the picture.

"You do absolutely anything for the people you love," he said more to himself then to her. "I guess that's why you're so hesitant to love anybody…"

"Wow," she answered sarcastically, "and all this time I thought it was just because all guys are assholes." Her tone was sarcastic, but it was different than before; it was quieter and more pensive and maybe even a little defeated. Whatever it was, it made him nervous. 

"Hey," he said softly, "I'm sorry I went through your stuff. I didn't realize… this is really sensitive and-"

"This thing is done," she answered. 

"What?"

"This thing… our thing… I don't want it anymore. It's done."

"I thought we didn't have a thing, Faith. Isn't that what you're always telling me?" He knew he had to stop being so defensive but he couldn't help it. 

"Whatever it was, it's done. I'm…" she searched for the most hurtful word she could find, "bored." 

"This is not boring! You fucking make sure of it with your fucking mood swings and bi-polar-" he cut himself off knowing the path he was headed down was certainly not going to make this better. 

He was getting emotional about it because as many times as Faith had said this meant nothing and it was just meaningless sex, there was never a connotation that she was done with him. As much as he was aware of her insecurities, she knew just what his were too. 

"Can you just-" he stopped again, feeling his voice hardening – a defense to keep it from cracking – and then continued, "Can you just be honest with me for once? What's this really about?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" she asked, forcing a laugh. "Xander, I just told you that are little fuck buddy thing, is over. Why is that a shocker? I'm amazed you kept me satisfied for more than a couple runs, props to you, alright?"

"Why now, huh? Why not after a week or a month ago or in a month? Why did you decide now?"

"I didn't decide anything," she claimed, "you just ain't getting me off like you used to."

"I don't understand how after you just started opening up to me and… that it, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"In the car, you talked to me. You told me things that you don't tell people… you let me kiss you and-"

"Shut up! I don't want this, okay? Can you just listen to me? I don't want this…"

"We don't have anything, Faith…" he mocked.

"I don't want to care! I don't want to feel this way when you don't show up or… Xander, I just don't want this. I don't want to love-" she stopped herself as that word that she so rarely said went through her lips. 

Xander looked into her eyes; they met for only a quick moment before he felt her pull him into her. She kissed him hungrily and he grabbed her hips, picking her up off of the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist, holding herself up; he raised his hands to her face and held it tightly as he kissed her passionately. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled it open, busting several of its buttons as she did so. He lowered his hands to the bottom of her shirt and both of them pulled the sweatshirt along with her t-shirt over her head. 

She moaned softly into his mouth as he ran his hands over her white bra. God, he knew just where she needed to be touched. He lowered one hand to her lower back to help support her and raised the other to push her hair from her face. He looked deeply into her eyes and her tilted face with her mouth slightly ajar as she breathed heavily. She loosened her legs from his waist and let them drop to the floor so she was once again standing. Still looking at him with that expression the meant that both of them realized how sexy she was, she unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them to the floor. 

Xander looked into her face, and yes, she was sexy as soon as she woke up in the morning from a ten hangover, and damn was she sexy when she looked at him like that, but he knew it was a mask. He had come to love those times when he pretended he didn't see the mask but on the times when he could see it, he felt guilt for the other times on top of the actual guilt. He took a deep breath and a small step back, looking her over. Everything about her seemed so soft and natural and pure… everything else was just the mask she put on to try and protect that vulnerable, sweet girl underneath. He looked at the cross she wore, resting just above and slightly between her breasts.

Faith's strength was because of her beauty. Her fault was her beauty. It hadn't been the first time Xander had thought that if she had been a twiggy, flat girl with no curves and straw-like, frizzy hair, could she be more true to the way she really felt? He knew one day Faith woke up and decided she was going to play 'tough-girl' to survive… the catch was that she hadn't figured out how to go back. 

"What?" She asked, growing uncomfortable with his longer than usual ogle. 

"I love you," he answered with all the honesty that his soul contained. "I really love you…" he repeated, as if it were the first time he was realizing it. He took the small step back towards her, feeling an intense need to kiss her. He stopped, just before he was about to lean forward to kiss her, the tension radiating off of her again. He looked into her eyes and she shook her head as she clenched her teeth uncomfortably. 

"No…" she muttered. "Don't touch me," she added as he put his hand on her arm. She shook it off as though it had burned her, quickly bending down and picking up her sweatshirt and tossing his at him. "I don't play that game," she said angrily, then pulled her sweatshirt on. 

"I'm not playing!" he answered emphatically. 

"Get out," she answered, turning away from him. He grabbed her arm to say something mean or hurtful, whatever would make him not feel so vulnerable, but he felt her shaking.

"Why are you shaking?"

"I'm not," she defended weakly, pulling her arm away. 

"What did I do wrong?"

"What is this, a question and answer session? Get the fuck out."

"Well usually when I do something wrong you're sure to tell me all about it…" he answered angrily, even though it was a lie. Faith had a thing where she didn't say anyone did anything wrong because she figured she had done a lifetime of wrongs already, so who was she to cast the stone. 

"You knew that… you knew this was meaningless. I told you that. It doesn't mean anything…"

"Apparently it does! It means something to me and I'm more than sure that it means something to you too!"

"What do you want from me?"

"I just want you."

"I don't even have me," she answered. 


	6. Chapter V

Lie To Me Chapter 5

Faith walked into headquarters, a place that appeared similar to a mix between the Council's old headquarters and a school. Her senses immediately drew her attention towards Buffy who was sitting in a chair pretending to not be stressed out. Her facial expression, body posture, and general aura all indicated that she didn't want anyone near her; Faith took that as her cue to go see her. 

"What's up?" Faith asked, plopping herself down in the chair facing Buffy's then pulled her sunglasses off of her face and then put them on top of her head. 

"Where have you been?" she asked, completely irritated, but her irritation had absolutely nothing to do with Faith's absence and Faith knew it. 

"In what sense?" she asked with a devilish smirk. 

"Do you think you could notify me of the day you plan on growing up?"

"You're stuffy enough for the both of us," she assured her as she propped her boot up on the arm of Buffy's chair. Buffy groaned in response to the combination of being called stuffy and then having a muddy boot placed directly next to her – or maybe it was the look Faith gave her, one that was both challenging and nonchalant. "So…" Faith pushed, bored with the silence.

"Faith, I'm busy," she snapped.

"Yeah," she agreed sardonically, leaning forward to see the papers Buffy was looking at on her lap. Buffy's knee-jerk reaction was to pull the pages up to her chest to shield them from view. 

"I knew it," Faith said jokingly, "you're an in the closet comic book lover!"

"No I'm not!" she answered angrily. 

"So it's porn?" Faith asked, feigning a serious question. "If that's the case, lemme see," she whined as she pulled childishly at the corner of the page. 

"Faith, I'm busy!" she reprimanded, this time not leaving even a centimeter of room for Faith to try and lighten her up. Faith leaned back in her chair, biting her lower lip for a moment, showing a shred of insecurity, and then nodded,

"Alright, granny," she answered, this time the teasing only slightly present in her tone. She waited another moment hoping for Buffy's face to soften at least a little but it didn't. She stood from the chair and took her sunglasses off of her head and began to place them over her eyes and stopped,

"Hey, do you want me to do anything?"

"No," she answered, her voice still irritated. 

"Alright, I'm out then," Faith answered, now her tone much closer to Buffy's then the light one she began with. She turned away from Buffy and headed back towards the door. Kennedy walked down the hallway and was excited to see Faith,

"Hey," she greeted happily. Faith readjusted her backpack on her shoulder and put her sunglasses on her face,

"Hey," she answered, pissed off, without even looking in Kennedy's direction as she left. Xander was standing in an adjacent room and was walking out just in time to hear their short interaction. He heard Faith's tone and saw her completely closed attitude; he approached Kennedy, who was devastated by Faith's attitude towards her, even though she wasn't shocked. She knew, like anyone who knew the Slayer, that her emotions were volatile and her attitude was sharper than any knife any of them had ever used. 

"What's going on?" Xander asked, concerned that Kennedy had been lashed out on (even if it was only so slightly; coming from Faith even a little was intense). 

"I don't know," she answered with a shrug. Xander glanced over at the door that was just closing behind Faith and then glanced the other way and saw Buffy sitting in the chair looking just as pissed off.

"Those two…"

"If I ever get like that, will you smack me?" Kennedy asked.

"I swear I will if you're restrained and there's no chance of you hitting me back," he promised with a grin. 

"Okay," she smiled. Xander was the most powerful person out of everyone there – he could return all of a persons confidence in only a few words or glances. Maybe that was why Faith was so hooked on him, Kennedy thought. She didn't understand what kind of a thing they had going on, but she knew that there definitely was a thing, and always would be a thing, between Xander and Faith. Faith had that exciting, strong attitude coupled with a sexy woman who desperately needed someone that would take care of her; Xander was someone who always wanted to take care of someone who really needed him, but was still an amazingly strong, and most of the time, extremely dangerous person. 

Faith pulled a sweatshirt out of her gym bag and pulled it on over her grey tank top, streaked with sweat, making lines of it a darker, charcoal grey. She sat on a bench and gulped down several large gulps of water. She'd been coming to the gym at least once a day since they'd settled into their headquarters about seven blocks away. While she was in prison, she focused more on her emotional state rather than her physical one and as she both grew out of her teenaged metabolism and her Slayer muscles decided they were on sabbatical… well, she wasn't happy with the way she was looking. 

As she stood up and pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder she noticed a guy with a towel around his neck definitely liking the way she was looking these days. She flashed him a look and then took another sip from her water bottle. Less than an hour later, Faith and her steroid loving, iron pumping boy toy, were walking into her apartment. 

As he, Sean as he was actually named, fiddled to close the door, the tricky lock occupied him for quite a while. Faith glanced behind her and made a mental note that she definitely had found herself a jock cock – good for one night only. She grabbed a bear out of the fridge and asked,

"Hey, you want?" He turned around, quickly forgetting the lock and wondering what exactly she was inquiring about. She held out a longneck bottle of Corona towards him, leaning against the kitchen counter with her own pulled up to her lips. 

"Sure," he answered with a grin, taking the beer from her. 

Faith leaned against the counter, feeling the cold countertop against her lower back, the edge both slightly uncomfortable and soothing at the same time. She looked at him from his large feet clad in sporty looking sneakers to his hair that was spiked with both gel and drying sweat. He was extremely good looking, and like Faith, he was very well aware of that fact. 

"I love it when a chick doesn't drink light beers…"

"I don't like it light."

"So I've seen you around the gym a few times…" he mentioned, taking a long sip from the beer. She nodded and continued the small talk, but she barely heard herself speaking, and after a few moments she didn't hear him speaking either. She continued looking at him, and from his end, he saw her eyes sparkling at him with desire and intrigue, as well as a large helping of sexy. 

To her, she looked at him and as the seconds ticked by she saw him less and less as the gorgeous personal trainer who she wanted some personal training with, and more and more as a gross thing in need of extinguishing. She moved her free hand behind her onto the counter and gripped the serrated knife resting there. She closed her fingers around it the way she would around someone's neck, starting off just firm and then increasing the grip until she could feel the plastic handle compressing slightly, molding to her fingers, and then she would loosen it slightly so it felt comfortable in her hand. 

She looked at him as he finished off his beer in a long sip and then walk towards her. He stood in front of her and reached his hand around her to put the empty bottle on the counter behind her. He brought his hand back, but stopped it and brushed a small strand of hair away from her face. As he leaned in to kiss her, she pulled the knife around from behind her thigh and stabbed it into his side, feeling him tense from the pain and fall into her deeper. She pulled the knife out, feeling the serrated edges catch on his skin and the material of his shirt, before jamming it into his side again, a few inches higher, then lower again, and again, and again, and-

"You're beautiful," she whispered, putting the piece of hair behind her ear. He lowered his lips and kissed her, softly first and then immediately accelerating it into a passionate kiss where he opened his mouth as wide as he would have to eat a triple decker sandwich. Faith kissed him back, moaning encouragingly into his mouth as he continued to kiss her – or consume her, she couldn't tell – rubbing his chest with her hands. His hands were all over her, running from her cheeks to her neck down over her breasts, her stomach, and then gripping her ass in a way that someone must've at some point told this guy was sexy, because he acted as though he were doing her a favor. 

Faith pushed him on, encouraging him constantly, feeling the drying saliva on her neck and smelling the strong mix of cologne and hair gel. His mouth was as wondering as his hands, moving from her lips to her neck and even down to her chest as he pulled her sweatshirt collar down with his hand. The back of the collar pulled uncomfortably on her neck but she ignored it, like so many other things running through her mind.

"Do you wanna?" he asked, finally breaking his lips from her skin, in a breathy tone. He was looking into her face as he asked expectantly. She felt her arm muscles tense and in a flash she saw a straight horizontal line across his neck, the blood beginning to fill the knife wound. He grabbed his throat as though it would save him – they all thought that if they held the wound it would somehow help them to hold onto their fragile, meaningless lives. Faith blinked and looked up at the optimistic guy, still smiling except that he'd raised his hands to her breasts as though that would help her answer the question.

"Yeah," she answered, as though there was never a question, which to her, there wasn't. She blinked and in an instant she felt his hands grip her thighs in a frenzy. She blinked again and she was lying in bed with him hovering over her, pulling off his shirt. She blinked again and he was inside of her and there were moans of encouragement escaping her mouth that felt foreign to her, as though she wasn't even the one making them. She decided she wanted to blink again, except this time not open them for a little while.

Xander parked his truck, pissed off at the fact that there weren't any parking spaces without three blocks of Faith's apartment. Granted, he ignored the rules and parked in the lot of a convenience store directly next to it, but never the less, he was pissed off. And like always, Xander decided to take his negative energy and put it towards being concerned for the people around him. He had seen how easily Faith had been set off by Buffy earlier that day, and he knew it had everything to do with their argument. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he wanted to make things right. Her words had been ringing in his head since he had left the night before.

'What do you want from me?'

'I just want you.'

'I don't even have me.'

If she didn't have her, and she wouldn't let herself have him, did she have anyone? He wanted desperately to be that anyone, but she just wouldn't let him be. I have a strange fucking way of showing that I want to be long-term guy, he mocked himself as he walked through the front door to her apartment building. Fucking a chick – especially a chick called Faith – randomly and agreeing with her that they didn't have a thing together was a great way of getting the whole long-term vibe across. 

He decided against the elevator, and since he had a couple weapons on him, he took the stairs. Faith's apartment was better than her motel room years ago, but only by a little. The place was shady, and if she didn't have the strength she had, no one would've ever allowed her to live there. She defended that she had better things to spend her money on then a chandelier in her hallway. 

Three flights up the stairs, and barely out of breath, Xander walked over to the door to Faith's apartment. He raised his hand to knock but stopped abruptly as his throat tightened considerably at the sounds he heard from inside. If there was any doubt in his mind before, the feeling of his stomach sinking at a million miles per hour confirmed it. He felt betrayed, cheated, dirty, and worst of all, unwanted. 

He took a step backwards and then turned to leave, but stopped and turned back. He repeated this at least a dozen times before he decided to endure his punishment for all of his mistakes with her. He stood outside of her door, despite the fact that he had a key in his pocket, and listened to the hyper-masculine grunts and groans from within, which overrode and practically muted out the moans from her. At least three times he gripped the key in his coat pocket, wanting to storm into the apartment and kill the piece of shit fucking her. But he made himself stop knowing that if he went inside he'd have to see that piece of shit, fucking her. He didn't want to see her like that… he never wanted to see her like that. 

Instead, he stood there in silence, biting at the insides of his mouth in frustration and resentment, as his ears were filled with sounds that he would never be able to forget. 

'What do you want from me?'

'I just want you.'

'I don't even have me.'

He forced himself to take a breath, trying to calm himself down. He felt angry, but even more than that, he felt choked up. He had to admit to himself how much she was hurting him, every time that asshole entered her and she moaned, begging for him, not Xander, to do it again. 

'What do you want from me?'

'I just want you.'

'I don't even have me.'

Again, and again, and again, she wanted him, not Xander! Again and again! He heard the springs of the mattress creaking and he heard her inhale sharply with every thrust. Again and again… and again! He gripped the key in his pocket again,

'What do you want from me?'

'I just want you.'

'I don't even have me.'

He didn't want to see her like that. He let go of the key and raised his hand up to his eye, needing to wipe the tears away from it. He knew she hurt the people around her because that was how she felt all of the time. He cried because he could feel the pain that he knew she felt – the pain she felt when she couldn't even believe him when he said that he loved her. 

'I'll scream!' Professor Worth warned as she approached him confidently, holding a knife in her hand. She could feel every fiber in her legs from her feet through her calves and up through the fronts of her thighs, each of them with adrenaline rushing through them. 

'Who wouldn't' she answered, pulling the knife back and then stabbing it into him. She loved the way that felt; at first there was a resistance – the flesh demanding that there be no entrance of the foreign invader – and then once the blade was past that threshold, it seemed to slide in smoothly until the blade ended and the handle was right against the flesh, begging to taste the blood of the wound. 

She opened her eyes, concluding the long blink, and heard moans of pleasure and conclusion escape her lips, projecting her biggest lie – that this was pleasurable to her – for him to hear and memorize for life. He unlatched his lips from her throat and looked proudly into her eyes, flexing his muscles hoping that she had noticed. 

"You're amazing," he breathed, kissing her jaw. She answered by running her fingers through his twice sweaty hair, feeling the gel rubbing onto her fingers. 

She blinked and she was in panties and a tank top walking him through the living room area, him holding her hand and following her obediently, to the door. She went to unlock the door and realized that it hadn't been locked in the first place. She noted how bad that would've been if Xander had come by. Then, concluding that she wouldn't have cared if he had, she said her heartfelt goodbye,

"Yeah, that was fun, bye," as she opened the door and gave Sean a nice push out of the door. 

"Later, Babe," he said happily before he bumped into Xander. "Sorry, dude," he apologized, and then decided he should make a quick escape when he saw the way Faith and Xander locked eyes on one another. 

Faith felt like she couldn't breathe when she saw him standing there. You don't care, you don't care, you don't care, she chanted in her head. But she did care, and the way the floor seemed to be falling out from underneath her as the ceiling fell down on top of her proved it. 

"Mind if I come in… Babe," he said sarcastically as he walked into the apartment. She was still frozen where she had been when letting Sean out. He walked into the kitchen, ignoring her for the time being, more because he felt like he was going to have to wipe away his tears again if he looked at her right now. He didn't want to see her this way! With his arms crossed tightly across his chest, making it clear that he wanted his space, he paced an askew circle between the kitchen area and the television area. 

Faith finally closed the door and walked back over to her beer on the counter. She leaned her back against the edge again, this time putting some added pressure wanting to distract herself from the pain with some different pain. She took several long sips from the beer, now warm from sitting out for so long. She took sips, rather than long chugs because she was trying to clear the dry spot in her throat so she could speak, but after each sip it felt just as dry. Finished with the beer, she decided she still needed to say something. 

"So-" her voice caught from the dryness and she cleared it before continuing, "So, what do you want?" Xander stopped walking and turned to her, standing in the same place Sean had been. He still held his arms crossed as he looked at her, having to glance down at the floor every few moments. 

"I… I wanted to see if you were okay." He waited a few moments and then added, "I, umm, got here a while ago, and…" he clenched his teeth tightly, trying to control the emotions inside of him, "I just wanted to make sure that you'd be okay." He glanced up at her and she put her eyes down at the ground. "Are you okay?" he asked, even though it was more obvious right now that she wasn't, then maybe it ever had been before. 

She saw herself take a step forward towards him, hesitating slightly, before putting her hands gently on his cheeks. She pressed herself against his strong body, the only thing that she was able to find comfort in these days, as she kissed his lower lip so softly… His hands fell to her waist, holding her securely like she could only be his, as he kissed her. 

'Hold me,' she begged, raising her lips to his ear. He embraced her body with one arm and brought the other up to embrace her face next to his own, holding her lovingly, without expecting anything. 

'I love you,' he whispered, his words muffled because he held her so closely.

"Are you okay?" he asked again. 

"I'm fine," she answered mechanically, as she realized she wasn't in his arms, she was still standing there with the counter's edge digging into her lower back. 

"Well, I'm going to go," he added, the tears in his eyes evident in his throat. He cast his gaze down at the ground as he held his hand up as a type of nonchalant wave, "you look tired," he added, "you should get some sleep." He walked quickly away from her and towards the door, "I'll let myself out," he added, as soon as he heard her take a step to follow him, "I'll lock it." He was borderline babbling due to his lack of confidence and Faith couldn't seem to make herself say anything. 

Xander made the mistake of glancing up at her as he closed the door. He saw her wiping her eyes, trying to rid them of the tears cascading down them. He slammed the door quickly, taking a long deep breath as though he hadn't been allowed to inside the apartment. He turned and walked as quickly as he could towards the stairwell. He opened the door leading to the stairwell and then slammed it behind him. He turned back towards it and began punching the door, venting all of the emotions that were flooded inside of him as he screamed,

"Fuck!" He bit back his tears and converted them into anger as he kicked the shit out of the door, still screaming. 

Faith immediately felt sick to her stomach as the door slammed, making him disappear. She walked stiffly through the kitchen and living room and bedroom, getting to the bathroom, and immediately throwing up in the toilet. She hadn't eaten anything all day and the only thing inside of her was a bottle of water and a beer. She wasn't sick from the alcohol or the lack of food or the adrenaline… she was sick because of all of the thoughts of blood coursing through her mind and how much she wished she had stabbed the shit out of that,

"Stupid fuck!" She began sobbing uncontrollably, feeling as though his hands were still touching her all over, bombarding her with their heat. She felt the dried sweat and saliva on her skin again and she grabbed for the towel hanging on the wall. She missed it due to her suddenly blurry vision. Finally grabbing it, she began rubbing the rough cloth violently against her neck, trying to make his touch disappear. She continued to sob, the pain from the cuts being caused by the towel combined with the fact that she could still feel him all over her, driving her further and further into hysterics. 

Xander stood quietly in the stairwell now, feeling his body shaking from the adrenaline pumping through it. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. The sounds he listened to, for what seemed like eternity, still echoed loudly in his mind, but the vision of her crying as he left indifferent to her feelings wouldn't leave his eyes. He took a few breaths to compose himself and then opened the door back up and walked towards her apartment. 

He didn't hesitate as he opened the apartment door, but as soon as he was inside he could hear her crying hysterically. He locked the door quickly behind him and practically ran towards the sound. He entered the bedroom, expecting to find her there, but the hysterical sobs were coming from the bathroom. He went in to see her sitting on the floor against the wall, crying hysterically, her face covered in both sweat and tears, as she rubbed her skin raw with the towel. 

"Faith, hey, stop it," he soothed, trying to grab her hands. She shook her head and continued to run the towel against her face. He tried to grab it away from her, seeing the raw skin with blood beginning to spot in the pours in some places. He wasn't able to get the towel away from her but he got her to stop rubbing her face with it. She rubbed her inner thighs with it, still hysterical. Xander tried to keep himself from panicking – he wasn't exactly in the most emotionally stable place before he came in and saw her like this – he wasn't sure whether to console her and then get her to stop hurting herself, or the other way around. 

With one food on either side of her legs, he squatted over her as he grabbed her face in his hands. 

"Faith… please… it's okay… it's okay, I promise," he soothed, kissing her forehead. She began to calm down and he put one hand over hers to try and stop her from rubbing her thighs. "Shhh…" he whispered, finally able to get the towel away from her. 

"I feel so dirty," she sobbed, "get him off of me," she cried, beginning to rub her skin with the heel of her hand. 

"Okay," he answered, trying to keep himself from losing it. He picked her up off of the floor and turned the shower on. Still holding her up so she could stand he maneuvered his way out of his jacket, leaving him in jeans and a t-shirt. He took her into the shower, ignoring that he was getting soaked, and only concentrating on her getting out of this fit. She rubbed her face and her neck roughly under the water; he decided to help her so maybe she would stop doing it such a hostile way. 

The cold water felt like it was going to freeze him to death but it seemed to calm her down. She eventually stopped sobbing and realized that any trace of Sean had definitely been rinsed off of her. 

"Okay?" he asked, seeing her composure practically regained. She nodded and he turned off the water. He walked her out of the shower, trying to help her not to slip, and grabbed a different towel off of the wall. He wrapped his around her shoulders and said, "I'll go get you a different shirt." He motioned to go but she grabbed his arm,

"Just…" her throat was soar and cracked from all of her crying. She motioned towards the toilet and they both realized she had thrown up. He flushed the toilet and closed the lid, sitting down like she had motioned him to. She followed him and sat on his lap, hiding her face in his soaked t-shirt, trying to catch her breath. He held her, wrapped in the towel, his chin resting on her wet hair. He realized then, that neither he, nor any of the other Scoobies had ever really seen Faith upset. It was a memory he would never be able to strike from his memory, and perhaps with all of his mistakes with her, he shouldn't be able to. 


	7. Chapter VI

Lie To Me Chapter 6

Xander sat on the toilet and realized it was definitely the first time he had sat on one for so long with his pants buckled. His thighs and butt were painfully numb and began to tingle from the uncomfortable seat. Faith had been quiet since they sat down almost an hour earlier, with her head rested on his chest tilted away from his view. He was still sopping wet and to entertain himself he wiggled his toes inside of his wet socks and shoes. He chided his stupidity for not kicking them off before getting into the shower with her, but he knew that at the time, he was about half a second away from complete panic, so his sneakers being uncomfortable and squishy didn't even enter into his mind.

The painful tingling shooting through the lower half of his body finally overrode all of his logic and he motioned for her to stand up.

"Faith," he said as he shifted his weight and gripped her biceps. She jumped, completely taken by surprise.

"I didn't realize you were asleep," he apologized, immediately noting that moving was a mistake by the look in her face. 

"Either did I," she muttered, standing up quickly. She seemed taken off guard and she responded by being defensive. Xander could practically see her paving up the crumbled wall around her. She walked out of the bathroom and Xander slowly raised himself off of the toilet as though his body was several decades older than it actually was. 

He stood still until the tingling in his legs went away, or at least for the most part, before walking out of the bathroom. Faith was standing by her dresser of clothes facing away from him. She was pulling her wet shirt off over her head when he came out of the bathroom. He was momentarily distracted by the defined curves of her body, but not made uncomfortably by them anymore. 

Xander leaned against the wall as he tried to get his wet sneakers off of his feet. He knew how upset she had been but as that faded he was reminded of his own pain and hurt because of the situation. He was furious with her and seeing how upset she was actually fueled his anger further. The fact that she would do something like that to hurt him even when she knew how much she didn't want to do it, almost made him sick. 

"So, do you throw up after having sex with me too?" he asked, his anger overriding his concern. She finished pulling on a dry sweatshirt and then turned and glared at him. "Is this some sort of sex bulimia or something? I've heard of regular bulimia and then the new thing is like exercise bulimia… I don't know if I've heard of sex bulimia before, but hey, anything's possible." His words dripped with angry and bitter sarcasm.

Faith remained quiet as he joked without any levity in his tone. 

"So what was that all about?" he pushed, seeing she was just going to stay quiet and allow him to vent. He didn't want to vent – he wasn't fucking venting! He was just talking to her like an adult…

She looked over at him again hearing his tone shifting from lacking levity to just plain pissed off. He rung out of shirt onto the floor, now not even looking at her as he talked. 

"I mean, are you and steroid guy going to go steady now? I mean, until you're bored, of course…" he mocked angrily. "Okay," he said, feigning seriousness, "serious question now, do you throw up after fucking me?"

"Xander, stop it," she finally spoke up. 

"I want to know," he demanded, "do I make you vomit? Come on, don't make me jealous… I don't want to be the only guy that can't fuck you hard enough that you throw up!"

"Xander-"

"What, I'm not hot enough? Only hot guys like that-"

"Xander! Please stop…"

"Faith, maybe no one's ever told you this before and that's why you're like this, so I'm going to do you a favor and tell you – you're acting like a fucking whore!" he yelled angrily. "Now maybe you just didn't realize it because shit heads go along with the whole, sex with no strings attached, thing-"

"So I'm a whore?" she asked, her voice getting more angry and defensive. 

"You seem to think so," he snapped, motioning towards the bathroom. He saw the hurt look immediately spring to her face and he knew he had taken it a little too far. She could've handled him degrading her and calling her out on anything she'd ever done, but it was too far for him to throw her moment of weakness back into her face. 

He was out of line and the hard thing was that he knew it. She turned away from him and walked out of the bedroom area and into the kitchen. He held back in the bedroom for a couple moments trying to regain his composure and have some sort of general plan on how to handle things. When he finally followed her into the kitchen, he still had no plan.

"Get out," she told him blankly as he approached her. 

"Faith…"

"Just go," she told him coldly. 

"Okay, so it was harsh, but jock boy?" he asked, trying to soothe his jealousy.

"It wasn't harsh," she answered awkwardly. 

"Okay," he answered, slightly agreeing that his comment was deserved. "So why are you still pissed off?" he asked as she continued to busy herself with straightening up the countertop. She wasn't facing him and the only answer he received was her shaking her head. He felt a sharp twinge go through his stomach seeing her so rigid in her stance, but he could still feel the heat in his eye from where the tears had fallen only a short time ago. 

"You seem awfully hurt by someone calling you on your sex life. Didn't you always say you were comfortable with your lifestyle?" She stopped what she was doing and stood still as though she were either thinking or trying to hold back her emotions. 

"Get out," she finally answered stiffly. 

"I thought you were comfortable with-"

"And I thought you cared about me," she answered, spinning around and throwing his insult right back at him. 

"And you didn't care!" he screamed back, his real anger finally being unmasked. "You told me that I couldn't have you because you didn't have you! How the fuck do you plan on finding yourself when you're fucking around with pieces of shit like that? You think fucking him is helping you find yourself? It made you sick! You freaked out! You… you want to know why you don't even have yourself to count on? It's because you know you do this shit to yourself – that's why you can't even trust yourself! Why the fuck should I worry about hurting your feelings when you don't even worry about it?" 

"I told you this was over," she answered, trying to hold back the emotions that were ready to leap out. 

"No, you fucking told me that I never meant anything to you!"

"You don't!" she screamed back at him. Xander turned away from her knowing he could convey his point – aka be more hurtful – if he was calmer and thinking more clearly. 

"So…" he began, turning back towards her and pointing in the direction of the door, "I mean nothing to you," he stated, "and you brought home a nice hunk to prove it to yourself. I mean, why not, right? A girl like you belongs with a guy like that… I mean, hot body, killer muscles – I bet that's a real turn on for you, the fact that he might actually stand a chance at hurting you. But, I'm pretty sure the big reason, besides for the fact that he's got a big dick – I could tell by the way you were moaning and getting off on it – it's simply that he doesn't have some fucking deformed face."

"Xander, stop it-"

"No, I'm serious! There's no reason a hot girl like you should be with someone missing parts… fuck, I wasn't half as hot as that guy before Caleb poked it out! You think I don't know that? You think I don't know how out of my league you are? Faith, I'm your good deeds for the day, I know it! I'm your pity fuck that you do to make sure you're still doing your piece of redemption! That's all I am to you! And you fucking that guy for everyone to hear, with the fucking door open, is just the exclamation point! Faith, you are a fucking whore! You use the people around you and you use yourself like it doesn't mean anything! That's what a whore is!"

She stood there, her silence almost disturbing. He had expected her to lash out at him just as he was to her and then they would both feel better about it. But she didn't lash out – she didn't say a word. 

"What's that face for?" he asked, nervous by her pensive gaze at the wall. She shoot her head calmly and answered,

"No, it's just that… people wonder why I don't believe them when they tell me that they love me." She forced a laugh, acting like what she said was just some joke. He looked at her, empty after spilling all of his emotions out in his words, and saw that smiling face that had fooled them all countless times, convincing them that she was happy. She smiled – that smile that convinced all of it's viewers that they wanted to smile too and forget about the underlying meaning to her joke. As he looked at her smile, seeming relaxed and unforced, he didn't want to smile, he wanted to scream, knowing just how many times he had been able to dismiss her pain because she had put on that mask. 

She finally turned away from him and walked over to her couch and laid down on it. She clicked the television on and then folder her arms, using them as a pillow. She had her head tilted so it looked like she was watching the television screen, but Xander looked at her eyes and they were staring down at the ground. Xander turned to leave, and forcing himself to not look back at her, he walked out of the door. 

Xander walked slowly to the elevator and once inside, pressed the button for the bottom floor. The elevator jerked into its descending speed and then lurched to a stop again at the bottom. He walked out of the elevator almost like a zombie and out to his truck parked in the adjacent convenience store parking lot. He turned on the car and a song he hadn't heard in years played on the radio:

Desperate for changing

Starving for truth

I'm closer to where I started

I'm chasing after you

I'm falling even more in love with you

Letting go of all I've held onto

I'm standing here until you make me move

I'm hanging by a moment here with you

Forgetting all I'm lacking

Completely incomplete

I'll take your invitation

You take all of me

Now I'm falling even more in love with you

Letting go of all I've held onto

I'm standing here until you make me move

I'm hanging by a moment here with you

I'm living for the only thing I know

I'm running and I'm not quite sure where to go

And I don't know what I'm diving into

Just hanging by a moment here with you

There's nothing else to lose

There's nothing else to find

There's nothing in the world

That could change my mind

There is nothing else

There is nothing else

There is nothing else

Desperate for changing

Starving for truth

I'm closer to where I started

I'm chasing after you

I'm falling even more in love with you

Letting go of all I've held onto

I'm standing here until you make me move

I'm hanging by a moment here with you

I'm living for the only thing I know

I'm running and I'm not quite sure where to go

And I don't know what I'm diving into

Just hanging by a moment here with you

Just hanging by a moment

Hanging by a moment

Hanging by a moment

Hanging by a moment here with you


	8. Chapter VII

Lie To Me Chapter 7

Faith laid naked on the couch, feeling the leather cushions grabbing slightly at her moist skin as she panted, waiting for him. Finally rid of his pants, he appeared above her again. Xander looked down into her eyes as he positioned himself over her, breathing just as heavily as she was. She smiled softly at him and he reflected the gesture before lowering himself down slowly and kissing her neck in just that right place. She moaned contently in his ear as she pressed her hand against his lower back, pulling him into her. 

"Uh, you're so warm," he whispered quietly to her, pulling her up off of the couch and closer to his own body with his arm now wrapped around her back. 

"I love you," she whispered back, immediately pressing her lips against his and then pulled his upper lip in between hers and sucked on it gently. He paused in his movement and pulled back from the kiss slightly, looking deeply into her eyes. 

"You love me?" he asked, a smile playing on the corner of his mouth. She smiled back at him – her expression filled with both passion and insecurity – then she hugged him, pressing his head towards her chest as she rested hers on the top of his head. His lips trailed down her chest and he felt her stomach muscles flex and quiver under his soft caress. 

"I love you," she admitted again as he filled her so completely. His arms wrapped around her tightly – she felt secure but not restrained – as he rhythmically, and at a new angle each stroke, filled her and did everything he could to make her feel good. 

"I love you too," he assured her, kissing the front of her throat where he knew a lump was from her insecurity in admitting her feelings for him. She arched her back under him, moaning so contently and softly to him. She only made those noises for him – they were the only ones that were genuine and she knew that. These noises didn't fall into a category that could be put in some three dollar porno and they weren't some act she put on to ensure that she could make him come back again. They were genuine, and only he'd ever heard them.

She could feel her heart quicken and the sweat pouring off of her as he made love to her, making her feel needed instead of just wanted. His arms were against her body with his hands tangled in her hair as he-

"Faith?" Buffy called, walking into Faith apartment. The door was closed but not locked, and after knocking once and getting no response, Buffy walked in, worried. Her worry increased when she saw Faith still silently asleep on her couch, the television set reflecting harsh light onto her face as she slept. As soon as Buffy stepped onto the wooden floor of the living room she saw Faith's eyes snap open in a mix of shock and what seemed to be disappointment. 

"B, what are you doing here?" she asked, taking a deep, forced breath. Buffy watched her closely; their relationship would always be deep and complicated. She had gotten herself used to working with Faith again, but it was times like these – when Faith wasn't in her 'slayer mode' – that Buffy found the most useful in getting a sense of where Faith actually was. 

"I… um…" she began to answer but her concern for Faith was increasing by the second as she watched her seeming to be fighting an internal battle. "Are you alright?" she asked, unable to keep herself silent on the thought. 

"Yeah," she answered hoarsely, finally making it up to a sitting position on the couch, "Just a bad hangover, I guess," she lied. She wanted to just break down crying at the fact that she didn't have Xander there making love to her and telling her all of those things that she so desperately needed to hear and feel, and further more, the fact that Xander didn't want to be anywhere near her anymore – she was a whore after all! So not only did she have to deal with the lack of Xander, but she also had to deal with Buffy there, most likely giving her another job to do. 

"Do you want some water?" Buffy asked, already walking towards the fridge, but not breaking eye contact with her. Faith nodded, concluding that she must look a lot worse than she hoped she was showing. Buffy returned with the glass and handed it to her sister slayer, still looking at her with that concerned, big sister look that just made her nervous. No one genuinely cared about her… no one! 

"Thanks," she muttered as she took the water and took a sip. Buffy nodded and sat next to her on the couch, still looking at her. Faith glanced down at herself, almost positive that she must be wearing a sign that said 'I'm depressed' or something in huge obnoxious letters somewhere on her person. Seeing that she was lacking any written sign she just took another sip of the water. 

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" Buffy asked again cautiously. She knew Faith was definitely not one to open up and she hated to force it, but she also had a much sharper sense to Faith's feelings than anyone else. Okay, not to give her complete psychic ability… there were almost dried lines of tears running down Faith's cheeks. 

"No," she answered uncomfortably. Buffy raised her hand up and wiped the remaining wetness from her near cheek with the end of her sleeve. Faith forced a laugh, knowing the tears were just reflecting how she really felt inside, and needed to be disregarded. 

"There was a… um… really sad movie on before… I forget the name of it," she babbled. Both of them glanced over to the television which was clearly playing cartoons. "Well, it was a movie when I fell asleep…" she added. Buffy let it slide, knowing causing a confrontation would make this go absolutely no where. 

"It must get lonely here," she said softly, glancing around at the decently large apartment. "I know I say having all of the girls around drives me crazy, but I think I'd feel lonely without at least a dozen people home at any given time…"

"I did the high occupancy housing thing… I appreciate my alone time."

"I know you do," Buffy answered understandingly, "I'd get really lonely though…" She knew Faith was lonely – who wouldn't be. She'd known Faith as long as anyone else had and Faith had always felt lonely. Faith was an intense person and that went for her emotions as well – she was high maintenance and to make her feel involved and a part of things took constant effort. She'd grown up since the old days and didn't need as much constant affirmation, but that quality of hers was still there and still longing to be nurtured. 

"So what are you doing here?" Faith asked again. 

"Oh, there's an important meeting at seven and Giles wants everyone to be there. I figured you'd forget or sleep in if I just told you, so I figured I'd come and get you."

"What time is it now?" Faith asked, a yawn escaping her lips.

"It's quarter to seven," she answered. 

"Fuck," Faith muttered, dragging herself off of the couch. 

"So," Giles continued, standing up from his chair. He cleared his throat a few times and even scrunched his shoulders. He looked at everyone trying to gauge their reaction to his news. He had just explained to everyone that there had been news of a bunch of vampire attacks in Chicago. He thought it would be best for someone to go and settle down there for a few months and get the situation under control. He didn't have any thoughts as to who exactly should go, or want to go for that matter. It wouldn't be a permanent move, most likely, but Giles wanted to know if there needed to be an alternate headquarters made there. 

To be completely honest, he saw himself having to ship out to Chicago for a few weeks because he didn't think anyone would volunteer, and he certainly didn't feel right about assigning anyone to do it. He didn't think it would be right to tell anyone that they needed to just uproot and leave town for an indefinite period. He was shocked when Faith nonchalantly raised her hand in a slight wave and answered,

"I'll go."

"Are you sure?" he asked quickly. His mind ran a mile a minute trying to figure out if she were just being more sarcastic than usual, or if she was actually volunteering. He knew Faith didn't generally have a problem getting up and leaving, but a part of him thought that that piece of her had changed in her whole maturation. He also thought he was getting the sense that Faith and Xander had perhaps been becoming something more than just road-trip buddies on various assignments. 

"Yeah," she answered, "everyone else has jobs and stuff… I don't have any ties, so I'll go."

"But-" Kennedy began to argue but she stopped herself seeing the look of resolve on Faith's face. Kennedy then looked over at Xander and saw his heart crumble when Faith expressed her lack of any ties. If there was any doubt in her mind before about there being a thing going on between the two of them, it was completely gone.

"Well, it doesn't have to be definite as of yet," Giles answered, also catching the look from Xander. "It will still be a few weeks yet… before I have all of the arrangements made and…"

"It's cool. Just let me know," she answered, standing from her seat and walking out of the room. 

"Very well," Giles answered, only that Faith was already gone and everyone else was beginning to dissipate, so his answer was more to himself. He pulled his glasses off of his face and cleaned them vigorously with a handkerchief. Giles placed his glasses back on his head and looked around. He was surprised to find that the only person still in the room with him was Xander. 

Through his suspicions about the two of them having more of a connection than not, he suspected Xander would've run out of there. Giles was aware of Faith's past – when he had been sent her file from the Council he found himself almost obsessed with reading it and trying to understand the events and what their effects had been. He understood Faith's detachment from her lovers and her fear of committing and trusting them… all of them. 

"Are you alright?" he asked, seeing Xander seeming to be quite distant in his stare. 

"I'm fine," he answered, forcing himself to his feet. 

"You seem a little… thoughtful."

"Yeah, I am…" he admitted, unsure of whether what Giles was implying was about what he was feeling but he was beyond caring at this point.

"Act on it," Giles said, still making Xander wonder whether or not they were on the same page.

"What?"

"She's not one to stop and think," he began, "and she's certainly not one to give someone else time to stop and think."

"Right…" Xander answered, still not completely clear on what Giles was getting at. 

"You know… she's like anyone else, in that… well, once her emotions catch up to her, she seems to only run faster."

"We're talking about Faith, right? I just want to make sure I'm not completely clueless to this little philosophical speech you're giving," Xander joked, completely uncomfortable with Giles' serious tone and concern and especially his level of understanding.

"Whether either of you realizes it or not," he answered, ignoring Xander's need for levity, "she's giving you a running head start to catch her." 

With that, Giles stood up from his chair again and walked out of the room.

"What the fuck?" Kennedy asked angrily, walking after Faith. 

"What's up your ass?" Faith asked, turning towards her.

"You have no ties? You have no reason to stay… no one around that you think is important enough to be here for?" she asked furiously.

"Babe, Red's the one you're banging, not me," she clarified, "and according to her, you're pretty good, so I would say that would be a tie for me if it were me," she joked. 

"You're getting good sex," she answered, shocking Faith completely in her confident delivery.

"I've learned to make it good with just about anybody," she covered, except it was her lacking the confident delivery.

Xander walked out of the room after thinking over what Giles had just told him. He saw Faith grabbing her leather jacket off of one of the chairs and then walking away from Kennedy. He picked up his pace and ended up to next to her in the hallway heading towards the exit. 

"Over here," he commanded as he herded her into a side room. She begrudgingly was herded into the room which housed a couple of shelves of books with chairs and some reading lamps. 

"What?" she asked curtly as he turned towards her after closing the door behind him. He looked at her, concern filling his eyes and her confidence immediately melted and her eyes shifted to the ground. 

"How are you feeling?"

"Whore's are worth speaking to?"

"That really upset you…" he said, more as a reprimand for himself than anything else. He shook his head slightly without even realizing it and then looked over at her again as he stepped closer to her. Her eyes were still set onto the ground except for the occasional glances she made up at his face. 

"I can't imagine why," she answered sarcastically. The hurt in her tone made him only angrier at himself. She motioned to walk past him and to the exit of the room but he jumped in front of her,

"Faith, please…" She pushed his hands away from her harshly and snapped,

"I told you this was over!"

"What are- I'm… I'm just worried about you. I don't want anything from you," he added, raising his hands away from her to prove his point. 

"You're worried about me? Yesterday I was just some vulgar whore to you… someone who you could just spit on," she answered, her voice on the verge of breaking.

"Faith-"

"That's what this is?" she asked, glancing around the room, "Just another quickie for you? You really do think I'm a whore…" She motioned again to leave but he grabbed her arms to keep her there. 

"I love you," he answered firmly as they both struggled against each other. She forced a laugh at his words and shook her head as though all of a sudden everything was just some sick joke. He was thrown by her shift in attitude. She bit her lower lip and then took his hands and ran them over her breasts as she said in a false seductive tone,

"Kiss me and tell me that you love me," she mocked. He pulled his hands away and stared down at the ground knowing not only what he had said the night before, but every time he had slept with her and agreed that it didn't mean anything was just fueling the rage behind her mockery. A part of him – the part that made him brave enough to continue – knew that she had to care about him, otherwise she wouldn't be nearly as upset. God she was so upset, he could see it! 

"You may think it's just some fucking joke, Faith, but I do love you." She burst out into a forced laugh,

"You call someone you love a whore?"

"I was angry," he admitted.

"So when you're angry, love goes away until you're not angry anymore?"

"No."

"So you can love someone and purposely hurt them? You could get angry and hit a girl and you'd still say you cared about her?"

"You can love someone and purposely hurt them…" he repeated, not agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, just repeating it. "Like you could get angry at them and then fuck someone else just because you knew it would hurt them."

"So obviously this isn't love. Like I said, it's just… you don't love me," she answered resolutely. 

"How can you be so fucking sure?" he asked, completely frustrated. "You're not exactly the expert in the loving parts of things… how do you know whether or not this is love?" 

"Love is hard," she answered, tears surprisingly evident in her voice. "It hurts sometimes when you're in a fight, and it hurts even more when you're not because you can't stand everything inside of you and… love is a lot of things but it's never supposed to… it's… when someone loves you they're supposed to make you feel good about yourself. They're not supposed to make you hate yourself even more than you already do…"

"Faith…"

"You don't love me! No one loves me!"

"You don't let anyone!" he yelled back. The door to the room swung open and Willow and Buffy stopped short at the entrance. 

"Is everything okay?" Buffy asked almost simultaneously with Willow saying,

"We heard yelling."

"Everything's fine," Faith answered curtly as she pushed past them to leave. 


	9. Chapter VIII

Lie To Me Chapter 8

Xander sat in his truck listening to the hum of the engine. He let it idled in the parking lot of the convenience store adjacent to Faith's apartment building as he tried to figure out what he was going to do. He stared at the bench seat of the truck allowing his eye to gaze at everything. There was a bouquet of white and red roses he had bought knowing that Faith loved flowers even if she refused to admit it. There was a small jewelry box open next to the flowers with a shining white gold necklace. It was a small nameplate with 'faith' written out in script lettering. Then there was the six pack of Corona that was resting on the floor of the passenger seat. And his brain was definitely not naïve to the times he'd spent with her in the front seat of this truck. He wasn't sure whether or not he was allowed to still categorize those times as good things, since he was deciding that maybe those flings they had had, made it appear that he agreed to their meaninglessness. 

He reached his hand towards the necklace and touched the soft fabric of the box. But then he quickly retreated his hand back to himself and slammed his hand on the steering wheel in absolute frustration. Why couldn't Faith have found herself a real man to get involved with? He decided that he was all wrong for the job of helping someone move on from the almost-end of the world. Why couldn't things have worked out between her and Wood and then this wouldn't have ever been an issue? 

Xander actually laughed a little to himself as that thought went through his mind. He realized that he didn't really like Robin when the two of them had actually tried to spark something between themselves. Xander realized that Robin was completely oblivious to the fact that he was completely out of his league with Faith. He was Little Leagues compared to her… at least when it came to emotions and relationship issues. He was no where near equipped to deal with her on an intimate level. But when the fuck did he decide that he was better suited for that fucking job? 

He glanced towards the beers and then immediately back at the steering wheel, deciding that that would be the easy route and Faith would, without a doubt, call him on it. She'd call him a coward or a sleaze bag, take the beer, yell at him for a little bit and then kick him out on his ass – he hadn't decided whether that last bit was going to be figuratively or literally. 

He glanced at his wrist and realized he had now been sitting, idling in the parking lot for well over a half hour, so he grabbed the flowers and jumped out of the truck. He walked at least half way across the lot before he realized that he had left his truck running. He walked back to the truck and turned it off and almost began contemplating the necklace or beer again, but forced himself to continue on with the flowers. He locked the truck and tried for her apartment again. 

Xander jogged up the two flights of stairs – he'd actually grown accustomed to the mini-workout since he had done it so often over the past couple of months. He reached the top of the flight and opened the door to enter the hallway. He walked a couple of steps towards her door and then stopped and went back, still undecided about the flowers. What exactly was he giving them to her for? What was their significance? Maybe she didn't even really like flowers… He looked down at the beautiful flowers, twelve red mixed with twelve white, and walked towards her door with them again. He made it about as far as the last time before he stopped and walked back again, unsure if he could come up with anything to say when – not if, but when – she asked him why he was giving them to her. 'Gee Faith, maybe it's because I'm trying absolutely anything to make you happy these days…' No, that definitely wasn't going to be the right thing to say. 'They're an apology…' No, she'd definitely make him specify what he was apologizing for and that would just lead to him getting pissed off about the Ten Inch Muscle Man again. He knew what he was sorry for and it wasn't for getting angry. He was sorry for making her upset. 

With a new resolution he walked towards her apartment, clutching the flowers like they were a shield and he was walking towards an army of archers. He knocked on the door, unsure if he was knocking on the door begging to be executed or absolved. He felt himself get nervous – not like, facing the end of the world nervous, but like asking a girl out when he was twelve nervous. She opened the door slightly and looked out at him. 

"What?" she asked curtly. He wasn't sure what to say. He looked at her red, puffy eyes and smelled the alcohol on her breath that she had tried to keep hidden by only speaking a short word. That smell had weakened him in an instant since childhood and to this day he still found it hard to stand up against. Standing in front of her, a task that wasn't exactly easy before, was now impossible since he felt like a nine year old standing in front of his drunk father.

"You drinking?" he asked, being sure to keep his tone light and unassuming.

"I'm always drinking," she answered, "what's it to you?"

"Well, it's just that…" he forced a small laugh, "I can't always smell you drinking, that's all." She shrugged,

"I guess the way I smelled wasn't your priority."

"Right," he answered, seeing she was going to be even harder to talk to then he had originally prepared himself for. She still hadn't opened the door any further and he wasn't even sure if he wanted to go in to her apartment at this point. "I umm… wanted to apologize to you for-"

"Forget it," she answered with another shrug. 

"No," he answered, almost snapping at her, "I'm not going to forget it. You were really upset and-"

"I wasn't," she defended.

"Yes you were!"

"I wasn't," she repeated, and he gave in. 

"Okay," he answered, "but I'm still sorry so I got you these flowers because I thought you had been upset-"

"But I wasn't upset, so you should just keep them."

"You know, I think they'd probably look better in your place. I need all the help I can get to keep my place looking masculine… I'm not sure flowers would really maintain that vibe." He was trying desperately to add some levity to this interaction, that at the time, was so tense he thought if he moved the air around him would shatter like glass.

"Yeah, you've probably got a whole bunch of chicks coming home with you now so you're right, you want to make sure the place looks all manly and shit."

"No, I-"

"Hey, how much did you pay for those?"

"That's not the point," he answered.

"I'm just curious how much you thinking getting me back into bed is worth," she added caustically. 

"I'm not trying to get you back into bed," he answered, angry that that was all she thought he was doing. 

"Oh, so you do have a bunch of chicks waiting for you back at your place, huh?"

"You know, one of these days I'm really going to find myself a friendly girl… one who's not defensive or angry or mean. One of these days, I'm going to find someone who enjoys me and," he raises the flowers up in between them and adds, "the stupid fucking things I do to try and make them happy."

"Why not make that day today," she answered angrily. 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you should go find some other girl, you know, one that'll actually make you happy, today… now, 'cause we're done."

"I already had that girl."

"Please, spare me the Anya speech, okay? I've heard it. Besides, you've got chicks to fuck and I've got JD to drink, so just go." With that she closed the door, leaving him out in the hallway with the flowers in his hand and tears beginning to well up in his eye. 

"I was talking about you," he muttered to himself as he dropped the flowers onto the ground in the stairwell. 

Faith walked back into her apartment, closing her eyes tightly in an attempt to block out her emotions. She returned to her couch, pulling her legs up to her chest and grabbing the half-empty bottle of Jack from the floor. She took another sip and swallowed it quickly, staring at the television as she flipped the channels quickly. 

She took another sip, this time a longer one, just before wiping the tears from her eyes. How did he know that she loved flowers? She knew she'd never admitted that to anyone. The tears continued to fill her eyes; she pressed the back of her wrist, covered in her sweatshirt's sleeve, to both of them, trying to blot away the tears. As the lump in her throat began to rise she held it down with another swig of Jack.

"Hey," Willow greeted, sliding into a seat next to Xander at a local diner. 

"Hey," he greeted back, happy to see her and Kennedy. They hadn't planned to meet each other but on more than one occasion they'd met there. It was a reliable place for decent food and it opened pretty early in the morning so it was a good stop before going to check in at headquarters. 

"You okay?" Kennedy asked, getting a good look at his furrowed brown sitting across from him in the booth. 

"I guess so," he answered. He looked down at his coffee for a minute before lifting it up to take a sip. 

"I know you don't want me asking," Willow said, "but I'm asking. What's up with the fight you and Faith were having a couple days ago?" He didn't answer, he just reverted back to staring at his coffee and she pressed, "Are you two… umm… not just road trip pals like I worked so hard to convince everybody that you were?"

"They are so into each other," Kennedy answered. "I've been telling you that since forever!"

"It's not really mutual," he answered, feeling less confident about everything between them as every minute passed. 

"Oh, don't even try to pretend. You're constantly looking at her when you think nobody's looking," Kennedy answered with a grin. 

"I know I'm into her… I mean, what part of Faith is there for a guy not to be into…"

"The lacking sanity part of her," Willow answered, knowing it was mean but also knowing it was true.

"Faith's better when she's been hanging out with Xander," Kennedy added. She spent a lot of time training with Faith and she had been able to see a significant difference in her demeanor at around the time when Kennedy suspected things began with Xander.

"Hold on," Willow said quickly, "You've been hanging out with Faith… as in, for a longer time than just these past couple of days?"

"A couple of months," he admitted.

"Months?" Willow almost choked on the word. He nodded and she inquired, "By hanging out you mean just like, watching movies and stuff, right?"

"No, Will," he answered, almost ashamed that he had hidden it from her – again!-, "we've been sleeping together for a while." He didn't like to make it public news because it seemed like Faith didn't want to deal with the repercussions of other people knowing. "I'm sorry I wasn't upfront with you about it," he added, seeing the look of distress on her face. 

"I just… I guess I can't really see how you'd be comfortable being with her like that again."

"It's a lot different… she's a lot different… in some ways," he admitted.

"So why are you guys fighting?" Kennedy asked, wanting to give Willow a few minutes to let everything sink in. 

"Because we both fucked up," he answered. "We were both in it for the physical in the beginning but… I said it once and I'll say it again, we have a connection and that made it just get complicated." 

"Faith can give you thirty ways to knock the wind out of someone but the girl doesn't know shit about dealing with her emotions," Kennedy concluded.

"So during those couple of months," Willow rationalized, "do you mean like once every month or so, or are we talking like a steady, every night kind of deal?" Xander looked at her and she knew it was the latter.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I just thought it would be disrespecting her if I did."

"You don't have to apologize… I'm just kind of shocked that Faith would be with anyone for that long."

"She really likes him," Kennedy answered, nodding her head at the fact. 

"So, do you ever lock your door?" Buffy asked as she walked into Faith's living room. Faith rubbed her face with her hand and asked,

"So, do you ever knock?"

"I think we're past pleasantries by now, don't you?" she asked. She had seen the bottle of Jack Daniels beside the couch as soon as she had walked into the room – her eyes had been drawn to it immediately. She was worried about Faith the last time she had been here over a week ago and that was just going on a hunch. 

"Sure," she answered, her tone showing that she was just too out of it to really talk just yet. 

"Some party last night, huh?" Buffy asked, motioning towards the empty bottle of Jack Daniels. 

"Nah," she answered, "just a normal night in my completely pathetic life." 

"Wow, so we really are past the pleasantries," Buffy answered, seeing that Faith wasn't even trying to pretend that she was feeling okay.

"That's what you said," she answered. Buffy looked over at Faith as she just slid back down onto the couch wanting to go back to sleep. 

"You're supposed to train with Kennedy," she reminded her. 

"She'll get over it," Faith answered. 

"Faith, get up," Buffy snapped, her strict-mom voice singing loud and clear. Faith glared at her – the look a complete challenge. "She looks forward to it and you know it!"

"B, guilt trips are basically lost on me at this point. I've got as much guilt as I can ever have already in my head, alright? There isn't room for me to care about anymore of that shit…"

"Faith, you're doing great with the big redemptive stuff but it's the everyday, little stuff, like say, getting up in the morning, that's hard!"

"No, dealing with a hangover from drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels is hard! B, just beat it."

"Kennedy's going to be really disappointed," Buffy answered, trying the guilt trip path once more. 

"That girl doesn't know what disappointment is."

"Okay, so why don't you define it for me so I can tell her?" Buffy waited for Faith to respond with something other than a groan. When she didn't receive anything filling that requirement she answered it herself. "Disappointment… now I'm just guessing since I'm sure I've never been disappointed before either, so I probably don't understand it like you do," she began sarcastically, "but from what I've been told, it's when someone you look up to or love or care about hurts you by not being there for you. But wait, I must not have that right because you said Kennedy doesn't know what disappointment is and I've just described exactly what you're doing!"

"B, save it, alright?" Faith snapped, but her tone was clearly less biting that before as she realized that she was sitting directly in the wrong.

"You're not in town a lot recently, and I know that's because of you working to recruit Slayers, but… Faith she looks up to you and apparently you're moving to Chicago for no one knows how long and then she's really never going to see you. But I guess never seeing you is better than just thinking she's going to see you." 

Buffy shook her head slightly at Faith. The small gesture had a large effect on Faith. For some reason she had always been yearning for Buffy's approval on some level or another, and now she was definitely not getting it. She saw the disappointment in Buffy's face out of her partially ajar eye and before she could even realize it, her eyes were filling with tears. None had escaped but the fact that they had sprung from the maximum security cells she kept them in deep within her was enough. 

She forced herself into a slumped sitting position, hanging her head close to her legs as she tilted her face to look at Buffy. 

"It really didn't take me very long to fuck up my life all over again, did it?"

"No, it didn't." Buffy's tone was rigid and unforgiving as were her steps as she turned and left the apartment. She knew she was being rigid, but a part of her really loved Faith and another part really hated the person she let herself become. When Faith was happy, there was no better friend in the world, but when she slipped into her depression – Buffy guessed that that was the word to use – there was nothing uglier. Buffy hated people who drank to try and get rid of their problems and Faith definitely fell into that habit. 

Buffy knew that there were worse ways that Faith wanted to use to make herself feel better and Buffy was proud that she hadn't gone back to those, but it was still no excuse for doing this. She went with the theory that if a person is in drug rehab for cocaine, they shouldn't be allowed to start smoking cigarettes. Yeah, cigarettes aren't as bad as cocaine, but switching one crutch for another is still using a crutch. 

Faith went and trained with Kennedy that morning. She didn't feel well but she sucked it up and went. Between spars she went to the bathroom to throw up and when she got back she'd go another round with the kid. It was torture, but she felt that she probably deserved it. 

She went through the day feeling like she was just in a funk. She felt disconnected with everything, even when she was touching it. She would pick up a glass of water and feel as though she was operating someone else's hand in order to hold up the glass. When she drank the water she felt like the glass was pressed against someone else's lips and the water ran down someone else's throat. She felt detached. 

After training with Kennedy she went back to her apartment. She didn't know why her brain was in such a haze until after three days of nothing but naps and showers. 

She was in the shower with the water hitting her like small bullets when it hit her – she really had gone and fucked up her life again. Angel had untangled it and put it in a nice bow and as soon as she'd taken it for only a short time she'd somehow managed to kink it into a jumble.

She was drinking again… a lot, and she knew it. She knew it was a nasty habit and she knew she didn't like the person she was when she was drinking this much, but that was besides the fact that she was drinking again. She'd put gauzy thin patches on her relationship with Buffy and now the carefully laid patches were starting to rip open. She'd gone and disappointed the only person that had ever looked up to her and the only reason she'd shown up to train with her was because of a fucking guilt trip. And to top it all off she'd completely fallen for Xander and didn't know how to handle it. 

She's fallen for him harder than she'd even realized. She'd become so comfortable with him that it slipped her mind how into him she was until he'd said those three fatal words – I love you. And she freaked… absolutely and completely freaked. If she didn't care about him she would've just smiled and nodded at those words, but when she felt everything inside of her leap to her throat ready to repeat the phrase… she freaked. Love was tainted in her mind… she couldn't comprehend it without vicious, painful strings attached. 

And she probably could've gotten over, or at least distracted herself from this whole love dilemma, but now her body and her mind protested anyone's touch but his. She'd tried and she couldn't even help herself out, that's how bad it was! She would've continued to find replacements for Sean from the gym and been completely content, except for the flaw in her plan… the only replacements for Sean that she wanted was Xander, the person she was trying to distract herself from in the first place. 

A part of her also wanted to prove to him that he was full of shit when he said he loved her. She'd never been with anyone who said those words and actually came through with it. She'd been infatuated and she'd been the object of infatuation… but never love. But the kicker was, when she was with Xander, she was pretty sure that's what love felt like… almost. Both of them had held themselves back from really loving the other – not in bed, but in other areas. They didn't hold each other as long as they wanted to… they didn't tell each other things that were burning inside of them… they didn't let themselves look at the other the way that they really wanted to. 

Faith thought about all of those things and grabbed her phone. 


	10. Chapter IX

Lie To Me Chapter 9

Xander walked down the hall of the new Council Headquarters feeling incomplete. It was a strange feeling, and one he hadn't felt in this dose for a very long time, and for that, he was thankful. He hated this feeling! He felt like there was a gap in his chest and his brain had to work extra hard at denying he knew why. He felt unwanted and unnecessary. 

As he was walking past the door to Giles' office, his cell phone vibrated in his left pocket. Like every other time his phone vibrated, which was at least a dozen times a day, he had a momentary lapse of composure and thought his first heart attack had arrived. But after that half a second passed, he realized his fortunate error, and grabbed for his phone. 

He pulled his small, but outdated, cell phone out of his leather jacket pocket and glanced at the name of the caller. Suddenly his heart attack fear rose in his chest again as he saw Faith's name scrolled across his phone. She had never called him before and he was terrified that something horrible had happened. He flipped it open quickly and asked ever quicker,

"Faith, what's wrong?"

His tone was trying desperately to sound in control and not panicky. Giles overheard his tone and immediately rose from his seat in his office and walked a few paces to the door. He saw Xander's back but Faith wasn't in the hallway. Perhaps he was hearing things… no, it was one of those blasted cell phones! He still hadn't grown accustomed to someone having a conversation with someone else in the middle of a field and the other person not being there. 

"I'm fine," Faith answered, even too quickly. It was her coined phrase… One night Xander asked her if her first words as a baby had been 'I'm fine'. She hated how the first thought into her mind was a night she'd spent with Xander. It had become something of a habit at this point.

"You scared the shit out of me," he admitted, despite the fact that he was letting himself show a weakness. He wasn't as insecure about his strength as she was, ironically enough.

"Sorry… I didn't mean to, I just…" She was clearly lacking for words so Xander added,

"I didn't even know you had my number. You've never called me before. I thought hell would freeze over before you ever did… I saw your name and, hey you never know in our line of work, maybe hell actually did freeze or something." He brought his ramble to an end as soon as he realized his nervousness from before was dissipating in his blathering.

"No," she answered softly. He knew something was wrong but it wasn't in the bleeding to death with a pack of vamps chasing you category, so he was calming down.

"So why did you call me," he pressed. There was silence through the phone line except for some light static, so he added, "I ask because the last time I tried to talk to you, you didn't seem really in the mood to talk to-"

"I miss you," she answered as though her words were being shot out of a gun. She said them quickly, not because she didn't mean them, but because if they stayed in her throat any longer she would've swallowed them down again. 

Now it was Xander who was quiet. Faith quickly grew uncomfortable with the silence and added, her words still moving rather quickly,

"You should come by… I'm making dinner for you… and… can you come over?" After she was done getting that all out she wasn't sure if it had all come out in the right order, but hey, she had said it. Xander could practically see her bracing herself for his decline. He hated the way she braced herself like that… he absolutely hated it! It made him so angry because it reminded him of how many times she'd been hurt before and it explained why she was so wary about so many things in a relationship. 

"That sounds great," he encouraged, "I'll be right over." If there was any doubt that she was bracing for disappointment it was proven by,

"Really?"

"Of course," he answered. "I'm leaving now."

"Okay." 

Xander couldn't help but smile brightly. He loved her and he didn't really want to think about how pleasant he was going to be to be around if she wasn't a part of his life. Fortunately, it seemed like now she might even want him too. 

Giles smiles happily as he saw Xander practically jog down the rest of the hall towards the exit. It delighted him that these people, people who had devoted their life to saving the lives of others, were learning how to have a life of their own. He wanted them to be happy despite their burdens.

Xander drove to Faith's apartment, deep in thought about this revelation she had apparently had. The last time he saw her she was drunk and didn't even want to look at him or the flowers he had gotten her. He wasn't in complete bliss over this because he knew there were some reasons she had sounded the way she did on the phone and why she thought she needed to cook him dinner to get him to come over. All she had to say to him was that she wanted to see him and he'd be there. But, he silenced his negative thoughts, because he didn't want to completely rule out the idea of her just trying to do something nice. 

Faith heard him knock at the door; it was open before the echoes were clear from the air. She looked up at him brightly, but he couldn't help but think that the bright smile seemed a little forced. God, he thought, I'm a cynical fucking bastard, aren't I? 

He noticed how much she had to look up at him and he realized how much taller he was compared to her. Her big, strong persona really had given off the illusion that she was much bigger than she actually was. He was so busy thinking about height that his height compared to her slipped his mind… in the practical sense at least. She stepped up to him, gripping the lapels of his leather jacket gently as she straightened up on the tips of her toes to kiss him. Without him leaning down towards her she still was a few hairs short of reaching his chin, so her attempt at a kiss hello failed. She lowered back down to her heels and the forced confidence quickly started to dissipate. 

She tilted her head slightly as she looked at him, trying to figure out why he had refused her a kiss. He seemed like he wasn't even paying attention… She tugged slightly on one side of his jacket, still looking at him with an innocent tilt. He snapped back to reality rather than his thoughts and saw her expression that he wouldn't describe as angry or insulted, just beseeching.

"Sorry," he said, smiling down at her. 

"It's okay," she smiled back and repeated her attempt at a kiss hello. He leaned down this time and met her lips with his. He wasn't expecting a kiss, and he certainly wasn't expecting just a simple kiss. He wasn't sure if he'd ever gotten one of those from her before. 

She kissed him, her hands quietly still on the front of his jacket, her lips pressed against his softly and lovingly and then they parted. There was no moaning or panting or pulling or grabbing… but the simple kiss still had just as much sex appeal as any of the other times she had kissed him and it had an added something that he couldn't quite place. She lowered back down to her heels again and smiled at him energetically. He smiled back, a rush of happiness running through his veins.

As she turned back towards her apartment, he was almost shocked that she put her hand in his leading him inside. He followed her happily and as she closed the door he continued inside. 

"You want a soda?" she asked as she passed the fridge. 

"Yeah," he answered with a grin. He noticed the subtle difference between her usual, 'want a beer'. She was definitely working extra hard on trying and he still wasn't sure if that was completely a good thing. But that kiss was amazing.

He probably would've stayed in his thoughts of that kiss much longer if it wasn't for the sharp sound of her opening the can of soda. He took a step towards her and she answered his motion nonchalantly,

"Go sit down, I'm going to put it in a glass."

"That's okay," he answered, not wanting to make more work for her later with washing unnecessary dishes. "I can just drink it from the can."

"It's not that cold yet and I know you like it cold…" she glanced down at the ground for a brief moment, almost embarrassed that she had learned things he liked. He couldn't help but smile; he loved her slightly embarrassed grin that brightened the hues in her cheeks and he really liked the fact that someone was thinking about the little things that made a difference to him. It had been a while since anyone had done that. It's true that the big stuff is the big stuff, but when the little stuff gets remembered, it makes a big difference too. 

He sat down at the small kitchen table, trying to subdue the glowing feeling inside of him. He was almost flustered by the confusing mixed signals… Not that there were any real mixed signals, but that was the problem. All of Faith's signals were congruent and with her, that seemed mixed. He had become much better at interpreting her completely askew ones. 

Faith walked over to the table a few moments after him with his bubbly beverage mixing happily in a tall glass of ice. She approached from behind him and leaned around him from the back to put the glass on the table in front of him. She touched his shoulder with her free hand as she did so as a caring gesture.

"Thanks." She nodded and answered,

"Umm… I think the steak is going to be ready in another couple of minutes." Xander smiled appreciatively, despite the worry he was feeling. Not to insult her in any way, but Xander was well aware of Faith's domestic skills and frankly, she had absolutely none. Steak was a fairly easy thing to make, but he still had his doubts about her ability to do so without a little guidance. But he saw the look in her face and how desperate she was – for a reason he couldn't understand – to impress him or make him feel important, so he kept quiet. 

She sat down in the other chair at the table and he asked, wanting to keep the atmosphere comfortable,

"I haven't seen you in the last couple of days… everything okay?"

"Been better," she admitted, but quickly defended, "but I've also been a lot worse, so I guess I can't bitch about it too much, right?"

"Yeah," he smiled, "but you can bitch about it a little if you want…" She smiled, but once again her eyes fell to the floor, as if she were a lot more anxious than she was letting on.

"Listen," he added, "I'm really sorry about all of those things I said… I've never been that angry before and I guess I just didn't know how to deal with it." 

"It's fine," she answered shaking her head dismissively. Her reaction was too okay for him to believe it was genuine. He was about to press the issue farther, knowing there was no excuse for him calling her the things he did, but he smelled the distinct smell of smoke. 

"Shit!" she cursed, catching the scent a moment before him. She jumped out of her seat and ran over to the oven and opened it, allowing a large dark cloud of smoke to escape into the room and showing the steak up in flames. She felt her heart sink at the sight. She had tried to hard to try and just make a fucking dinner – something normal people are able to accomplish on a daily basis – and she had completely messed up. 

She reached towards the pan the steak was on but Xander quickly grabbed her arm from behind her. 

"You'll burn your hand," he snapped, almost scolding her. He grabbed the fire extinguisher (that he had bought for the apartment) and quickly killed the fire as well as any hope that the steak was salvageable. He returned the extinguisher to it's station and then looked back over to Faith as he took a few breaths to calm down from the sudden excitement. 

"I guess I'll order something," she said, trying to make her voice sound unaffected by the event. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Italian's always good," he answered, trying to sound supportive. She nodded and walked towards her phone in her bedroom, and he could tell she was upset. He was surprised that it bothered her as much as it did; he had always seen Faith as the type that would've found this whole thing hysterically funny. She was usually never the type to try and be perfect at everything – she had her job and she knew she was awesome at it and that was usually enough for her. He couldn't quite gauge her mood since she seemed to be trying to play 'perfect' and it just didn't fit with her personality. 

He walked over to the window of the kitchen and opened it up, wanting to let the smoke out. After that, he grabbed his soda off of the table and went to sit down on the couch. The air was clearer in that room and he thought getting away from the kitchen setting would help chill Faith out a little bit. 

She came out of her bedroom after ordering the food and saw him sitting on the couch watching some commercial. The back of the couch was facing towards her bedroom; she walked up to the back of the couch,

"They said it should be less than an hour…"

"Cool," he answered, turning his head to look at her. 

For a girl who claimed to only be interested in the big picture, Faith was the master of details. She ran her hand down the front of his chest, exactly where it made heat rush through him. She breathed hot air on the top of his ear as she leaned the side of her face against his and then lightly kissed his ear. She grinned at him mischievously and then walked around to the front of the couch. 

Her smile was contagious; he smiled up at her as she towered over him now. She lowered down to him, her hands resting on the top of his thighs, and kissed him again. He was lost in the kiss and by the time he came back from it she was kneeling down in front of him. The girl really knew how to make a guy feel like a god. She arched her back, making herself just tall enough to grab his lips for another luscious kiss. 

As she kissed him, he felt her hands run up his thighs to his waist. He wasn't sure what she was doing, but it wasn't bad. She parted from their kiss, not necessarily at the end of the kiss, but then looked up at him with a pure admiration in her eyes as she looked up at him. He couldn't believe how gorgeous she was. But he was ripped from his moment of admiration for her when he felt her unbutton his jeans. The reality of what she was doing suddenly jumped into his brain and he all but panicked.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" he asked quickly grabbing her hands. 

"Nothing," she answered, shifting her weight to her feet to stand instead of kneel. He held her hands wanting to make a big point that he didn't expect things like that from her, especially in an attempt to make up from a fight. "I'm just playing," she lied, really not emotionally secure enough at this point to deal with being questioned about something like that. 

She motioned to walk away, trying to come up with an excuse in her head as she did it. He held her hands still and wouldn't let her walk away from this. This was what everything went back to – it was a big issue. 

She froze. She was torn between ripping her hands out of his grasp angrily – how dare him grab her and try and tell her what to do – and sliding onto his lap as though that had been her plan all along. Although her first impulse was to go with the angry, she reminded herself that the point of this was to get him back and make him want her again. Her pulling away from him – like she always did! – and then inevitably getting into a fight over it, would only remind him of how much nicer his life would be without her. 

So she turned back to him and slid down softly onto his lap. She straddled him, looking passionately into his eyes, but he saw the blankness that it was covering. She ran her hands up his chest and squeezed his shoulders gently as she reached her lips to his. 

"Faith…" he said, pulling his head slightly back so that their lips met but he aborted the kiss. 

"I miss you," she admitted. The feeling of having his lips graze hers and then be pulled away filled her with an ache that she didn't know what to do with. She genuinely needed him but she had no practice in life admitting that to someone and it caused her movements to seem forced and jarred. She leaned in to kiss him again, not able to deal with looking at him at that moment because she felt like she was about to break down into tears. 

"Faith," he repeated, grabbing her upper arms and pushed her back slightly so he could look into her face. "We need to talk," he stated firmly. She tilted her head downward, really not able to deal with looking into his eyes. 

Xander saw her eyes brimming with insecure tears. He felt awful, knowing the pain she felt was due in large part to him. He hated that he had made her so upset… so upset that Faith had tried to make dinner… so upset that she was willing to, well, you know, (he felt very childish being unable to even say the word in his head) and… she was trying so hard… it was weird. 

As she stared down at his stomach in front of her she began playing aimlessly with the material of his shirt between her fingers. She wanted anything that would be a distraction from the shattered glass cutting her apart inside. Xander saw a very young child sitting there in front of him. He realized that he'd never seen her appear so child-like; as a child would mindlessly touch something as entertainment or distraction or perhaps even as an escape, she fiddled with the excess material of his shirt.

"Faith," he began, needing to say something. She looked up at him and he suddenly felt less confident. "I-" he was stopped by the ringing on his cell phone. 

He felt her muscles tense at the sharp ring. Faith reacted sharply but subtly when she was caught off guard – that was something he had certainly picked up on. When something surprised her, her first instinct was to jump glaringly, but then her defense mechanism – 'I'm five by five' – kicked in and she would repress that urge to respond to her surprise. Xander thought that was why she blew up sometimes… it was all those little outbursts that she suppressed that finally would turn into one huge one that there was no holding back. 

"Are you going to answer it?" she finally asked after hearing it ring several times while Xander seemed to be thinking about something. 

"Yeah," he answered, finally coming back to reality. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out, "it's Buffy…" he added seeing the caller ID. Like clockwork, as he flipped open his phone to connect with one Slayer, the other distanced. Faith stood up from his lap and walked into her bedroom, despite his hand gestures for her to stay and he'd only be on the phone for one minute. 

"Hey, Buff, what's going on?"

"Xander, I'm really sorry to bug you but one of the pipes was dripping a little and Robin tried to fix it and… well, it's kind of leaking now."

"Leaking, like how much leaking?"

"Umm… it's not too bad," she lied. 

"Buffy, are there any other buckets around?" he heard Kennedy call from the background. 

"I could only find those four," Buffy answered her. Then she realized Xander was listening, "It's possibly a little more than a leak…" she admitted. 

"Okay," he answered with a sigh, glancing behind him towards Faith's bedroom.

"Are you busy?" she asked, feeling bad that she was asking Xander to come back to help. 

"Umm…" he answered, if you could call that an answer.

"Where are you?"

"I'm just at my place doing some laundry," he lied. "I'll be there in a couple of minutes. Don't touch anything!"

"Thanks, Xander!"

With that, they both hung up. Buffy went back to helping the others carry buckets of water out of the bathroom and Xander stood up from the couch. He knew Faith had heard everything, including the fact that he was now finished with his phone call, but she still didn't come out of her room.

Xander walked around the couch and gingerly into her bedroom. Her back was facing him but he could tell she was pretending to need to neaten up some things on top of a shelf.

"Hey," he said softly. 

"What's up?" she asked, turning to face him with an indifferent expression glued to her face.

"Busted pipe or something… they've got a major water problem over there right now. Wood tried to fix it but I think he just made it worse…" he added, trying to bring some humor, but instead he just dug himself a hole.

"He's good at that," she muttered. Xander got completely thrown off base by her response. He stood there in silence for a long moment, unable to come up with what to say to follow that. She continued for him. "So, you have to go take care of it, huh?"

"Yeah," he answered, "I would walk them through it over the phone but I think it would end up taking less time if I just went over there. It shouldn't take long…" She nodded, pretending to believe his promise. "Why don't you come with me?"

"As similar as I'm sure I am to you to laundry, I'm not sure anyone else would get the similarity…"

"How are you like laundry?"

"You're doing your laundry…" she answered, but then muttered, "You're here cleaning up your dirt."

"I said I was at home because you're the one who doesn't want them to know," he answered, almost snapping angrily. 

"It's cool," she answered. It bothered him how her tone sounded so much more calm when she was responding to an angered voice. It just made him realize how dulled she was to it… at least on the outside. 

"Why don't you come?" he encouraged again. 

"Nah… I've got to wait for the food," she reminded him. She leaned back against a dresser, placing her hands on it behind her back.

"Right," he answered. "Okay…" he added. He looked over at her and he knew she needed some sort of something to feel less shitty about how this had all gone "Umm…" he added without realizing. Great, now I'm a bumbling idiot in front of her… wonderful, I've reverted back to a high school boy when she's around! He really wanted, and knew she wanted or even needed, him to kiss her goodbye, but damn it, she's fucking intimidating! He knew, just because he was closer to her then she'd let him realize, he knew she'd melt right into his arms if he went over and kissed her goodbye, but there was some stupid part of him that made him nervous and unable to do it. He was scared that because of his nervousness, the kiss would feel forced and she'd feel even worse thinking it was some sort of charity case. 

"I'll be back soon." She nodded and forced a half smile. His stomach fell to the ground so quickly, it felt as though it bounced back up to his throat. He swallowed it down, rationalizing that that was impossible, and turned and left the apartment. He too had his juvenile tendencies… when put into an awkward situation like that, he would think about stupid things like his stomach's ability to mobilize throughout his body! 


End file.
